Posted Tuesday, July 19, 2005

The "Life Poster" Revisited: The Ken Burns Angle

Here's a quick follow-up tip to the Life Poster project I presented earlier this month.

Once you've made that big honkin' poster, you can do more than "just" order a 20 by 30 inch print of it. You can also bring it into iMovie HD and let Ken Burns have his way with it.

Use iMovie HD's Photos button to bring the poster into iMovie HD, and then adjust the Ken Burns settings as desired. Start zoomed in on just a few photos, then zoom out to reveal the entire poster. See for yourself: Watch the movie (846K).

Or instead of zooming in or out, use a fixed zoom position and simply pan down or across. And here's a tip from my book: to copy the Start zoom setting to the End setting—or vice-versa—press Option while clicking Start or End. (This also works in iPhoto 5's slide show design mode.)

Or mix and match Ken Burns moves: start zoomed out, then quickly zoom in on a few photos and hold that position. Then quickly zoom out and zoom in on a different set of thumbnail photos. (To learn how to pause and resume a Ken Burns move, see pages 216 and 217 of my book.)

However you apply it, adding some motion to your life poster can be a cool way to start or finish a movie montage.

Boss Ken Burns around. There's so much more you can do with Ken Burns, and you'll find all of it in The Macintosh iLife '05, the latest edition of the world's best-selling iLife book. And because this is the only iLife book that includes a companion instructional DVD, you can also see the techniques you read about. 345 full-color pages and a two-hour, 43-minute instructional DVD: yours for $23.09 (34 percent off) on Amazon.com. Order that baby!

See for yourself this Saturday. Live in the San Francisco Bay Area? Join me in Rohnert Park for iDay Afternoon, a four-hour seminar devoted to iLife, Photoshop, and more. Learn more.