Adding Animation

Animations are a cool way to make your slideshow more interesting and draw attention to specific parts of an image. But remember, too many and too fast animations can become annoying, so use them wisely!

Animation Assistant

If you want to create a great slideshow quickly, you can use the Animation Assistant. It helps you apply automatic animations to your selected layers based on some rules. These rules also work when you add new content to your slideshow. Before starting a new slideshow, you can check and customise these rules in the Animation Assistant.

In FotoMagico 6.6 and beyond automatic AI image analysis has been added to the Animation Assistant. The AI will determine the point of interest for each image and creates an animation focusing on the point of interest instead of just the middle of an image.

To open the Animation Assistant choose Animation Assistant… from the Slideshow menu or press ⌥+⌘+1.

Manual Animations

You can also manually edit animations. To animate a layer, make sure animation is enabled for the slide. You can do this by checking the Animation checkbox in the Slide Options. You can also enable animation through the Slideshow menu or a right-click menu.

When you enable animation, the Stage will show the same slide twice: once on the left side for the start of the animation, and once on the right side for the finish.

To create the animation, you can position, zoom, and rotate the layers on the left side, and then repeat the process on the right side. The speed of the animation is determined by the animation duration, which you can set in the Slide Options. You can preview the animation by clicking the Play button or pressing space.

Focus of Attention

To help focus the audience’s attention on a specific part of an image, you can use the pan & zoom animation. This effect is named after documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who popularized it.

FotoMagico provides a small white circle called the pan & zoom fix point indicator. It shows the spot that remains fixed during the animation, becoming the focus of attention.

You can drag or zoom a layer and the indicator will update automatically.

If you don’t see the indicator circle this can have several reasons:

• The layer doesn’t use any zooming
• The pan & zoom fix point indicator was disabled in the Preferences
• The indicator lies outside the currently visible region

Animation Timing

The Animation Speed curve in the Image Options allows you to fine-tune the timing of your animations. You can drag the points on the curve to set delays, easing in, easing out, and final delays for the animation. There are preset options like:

• Linear,
• Ease In,
• Ease Out, and
• Ease In/Out

to help you get started.

By default the image is animated at constant speed:

The animation timing is represented by a bar. The yellow shaded areas on the left and right show the incoming and outgoing transitions, while the middle section represents the animation itself. It’s important to consider these transition areas when planning your animation.

You can control the timing by dragging the curve points to the desired location. They automatically snap to transition boundaries. If you want more control, you can temporarily disable snapping by pressing the ^ key.

More Examples

Here are some examples to help you understand animation timing:

Example 1: The animation starts with a brief pause, then slowly eases in and continues at a constant speed until the end of the slide.

Example 2: The animation starts immediately, eases out towards the finish, and pauses briefly before moving to the next slide

Example 3: The animation pauses in the middle for a while before continuing to the finish.

With these tips, you can create awesome animations for your slideshow and impress your audience! Have fun experimenting with different effects and timing!