The Magnifying Lens technique

Apr 19, 2011

There may be circumstances where you do not have the whole slide area to show your image. If the image is too small for the human eye, you can always get your lens.

I had suggested the lens technique as a response to a template question last week. I got some emails asking me how I did this. So here is the explanation. Attached are the demo PPT and a `blank' png lens ready for your use.

13 Replies
James Brown

This is a pretty common technique used in Flash. Very easy to create and what's cool about flash is that when the magnifying glass  moves various sections of the image become larger. What I'm seeing with MS is that they like the cool tweening effects in Flash and they want to be able to create these same tweens in Power Point. However until MS comes up with frames and layers, you will never be able to create the awsome flash effects.

Basically to create in PPTx 2010 you may use shape subtract or a rounded marquee screen shot effect. I actually used Snag-it and Adobe CS3 Fireworks for the Ladybug effect.

What I did was this.

1. Opened Power Point

2. Searched for LadyBug in clipard

3. Inserted the image onto the desktop

4. Enlarged the image and grabbed a screen shot

5. I used fireworks to crop the rounded image.

6. I just copied the magnifying glass from Poornima's ppt.

7. I then ungrouped her image.

8. then I added my image and then I set the magnifying glass above the image.

10. Then I grouped them.

Again, this is a very simple effect to accomplish in power point 2007 or 2010.

Jeanette Brooks

I second what Venice said -- Poornima shares so many inspiring ideas!

Quick note regarding slide 2 in the PowerPoint file that Poornima attached above... it describes how to use the slide background as the fill for the circle within the magnifying glass. While that can work well with a straight PowerPoint file, unfortunately if you convert to Flash via publishing in Articulate Presenter, the background fill on the circle gets lost if the circle is grouped with the magnifying glass. So if you do plan to publish to Flash, best to use the approach described in slide 1 of her file, or keep the two objects (magnifying glass and circle) ungrouped. :)

Bruce Richards

James talked about Flash being able to accomplish the same effect. Here is a free tutorial on creating a Magnifying effect using Flash and Actionscript 3.0. The source code is provided in the tutorial. Create an Impressive Magnifying Effect with ActionScript 3.0

Because this Flash solution uses Actionscript 3.0, you will have to insert the Magnifying Effect as a Web Object for it to work in Articulate Presenter.

Regards

James Brown

BTW - Poornima -- I think it's great that you are sharing some cool ideas and I hope some of my comments don't sound bombastic. I only wanted to point out that there are many ways to accomplish the same thing and my intent is to inspire people to think outside of the box. Again, keep up the posts. You really have some nice ideas.

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