How to Create a “Ken Burns” Effect in InDesign

The popular Ken Burns effect is a good way to add subtle motion to your still photos for use in interactive documents. You could, of course, add the effect to a photo (or a group of photos) using iMovie, Adobe Premiere Pro, or any number of other video editing tools, save the effect as video, and place the video in InDesign. But you can also create the effect entirely in InDesign. There are lots of variations possible. For example, you might only pan across an image. Or, you might only zoom in (or out). Or you might pan and zoom. You can vary the speed. The sky is the limit. No matter the variation you choose, the basic workflow is the same. The method described here will work for files exported to EPUB, Publish Online, or using Ajar Productions’ in5. Sadly, the effect will not work in an exported PDF. You can download a simple 3-page fixed layout EPUB file that demonstrates the effect here. In the steps that follow, I’ll show how to create an effect that pans to the right while zooming in on the image. Before you begin, if the Animation panel and EPUB Interactivity Preview panels aren’t visible on your screen, choose Window > Interactive > Animation and Window > Interactive > EPUB Interactivity Preview to display them.

1. Create a rectangle that is the size you want the image to occupy in your layout. For clarity while you work, give this rectangle a visible stroke (which you can remove later if you choose). I’ll call this the “crop rectangle.”
2. Place your image in a separate frame, positioned underneath the crop rectangle you created in step 1 (Figure 1). Depending on the amount that you are going to pan
   
   and zoom, you will likely need an image that is larger than your crop rectangle.

3. With the image frame selected, in the Animation panel choose one of the Move and Scale options from the menu of animation presets (Figure 2). Note that this preset is set to play on the “On Page Load” event, which means that it will play when the reader turns to the page containing the image.

4. In the Animation panel, change the Scale to the final size you want the image to grow or shrink to (Figure 3).

5. Preview the animation by clicking the Play button in the EPUB Interactivity Preview panel. Ignore any image that is displayed outside the crop rectangle, as this part of the image will be hidden in a subsequent step (Figure 4).

6. The bright green arrow displayed on the image is the “motion path” of the animation. It indicates the direction and length of the pan effect (Figure 5). With the Direct Selection (white arrow) tool, click on the arrow, and then drag the anchor point at the arrow head end of the line to adjust the motion path length and direction (Figure 6). A shorter line will cause the image to pan less, a longer line will cause the image to pan more. It takes a little practice to get your head around how this affects the movement of the image, but after some practice it will become clear. Make small changes to the line, and preview the result, repeating until you achieve your desired pan movement.

7. In the Animation panel, adjust the duration to something fairly slow, like 5-10 seconds (Figure 7).

8. Select the image frame, and choose Edit > Cut or pressing Command+X (macOS) or Ctrl+X (Windows).
9. Select the crop rectangle, and choose Edit > Paste Into or pressing Command+Option+V (macOS) or Ctrl+Alt+V (Windows).
10. Preview the results (Figure 8).

If you need to make changes to the animation settings later, you’ll need to select the contents of the crop rectangle, choose Edit > Cut, then Edit > Paste in Place or press Command+Option+Shift+V (macOS) or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V (Windows). Then make the changes you want, and repeat steps 9–10. I admit that this might seem like a lot of monkey business. But with some practice and a few keyboard shortcuts you will be able to repeat this process quite efficiently and add compelling visual effects to your publishing projects.