How to add pan and zoom motion to a still photo

Motion is added to a still picture in Paint by Zaweba with Layer > Animation > Motion Preset. Pan and Zoom slowly moves and enlarges the image over time, and there are Zoom and Rotate presets too, all with eased keyframes so the movement starts and stops gently. Export the result as MP4 or WebM from Export Animation when the suite's FFmpeg is installed, and add a music track while you're at it.

This slow drift across a photo is often called the Ken Burns effect, after the documentary maker who used it so much. It turns a still into something that sits naturally in a video or a social media post, and it takes a couple of minutes to set up.

Step by step

Open your photo and set the document to the shape of the video you're making, such as wide for YouTube or tall for a phone story. Make the photo layer larger than the frame, so there's room to move without showing an edge.

Choose Layer > Animation > Motion Preset and pick Pan and Zoom. Paint creates keyframes for the move. Open the Timeline from the View menu and play it. Adjust the start and end by moving to the first or last keyframe and repositioning or scaling the photo.

Keyframes can hold position, opacity, scale and rotation, among other things. Animation Curves set how each move behaves between keyframes: Linear for a constant speed, Hold to jump, Ease for a soft start and finish, or a custom Bezier curve for something particular.

Making it look good

Slow is nearly always better. A zoom of ten or fifteen percent over several seconds feels calm and cinematic; a fast, big zoom feels like a mistake. Ease in and out, so the photo doesn't lurch at the start.

Move towards something. Start wide and end on a face, or begin on a detail and pull back to reveal the scene. Moving across a group photo from one person to another tells the viewer where to look.

Use a high resolution photo, and check the edges at every keyframe. When you zoom in, you're enlarging pixels, so a small image will go soft by the end. Starting with the image much bigger than the frame keeps it sharp, and it also gives you room to change your mind about where the move ends without a bare edge creeping into view.

Putting several stills together

For a slideshow, place several photos on their own layers. The video timeline treats layers as clips with in and out points, fades, cross-fade and keyframes. Give each its own motion, cross-fade between them, and use Fade with Colour to go to black at the end. Add Audio mixes a soundtrack into the MP4 or WebM export. Place Video brings in moving footage if you want to mix it with stills.

Exporting pan and zoom

Export Animation writes WebM or MP4 when the suite's FFmpeg is installed, as well as animated GIF, WebP and PNG sequences. For video sites choose MP4. Keep the .ptx too so you can change timing later.

Paint by Zaweba is free software that runs offline, so turning family photos into a short video doesn't involve uploading them anywhere.