The feature to zoom into a specific spot (just like in Prezi Classic) has been so hidden away in Prezi Next, that we decided to dedicate an entire blog post on this topic and show you how to achieve it.
The biggest difference between Classic Prezi and Next is that in Next the zooming feature has been hidden away under the Animations menu. Adding topics and subtopics is not considered to be zooming anymore. To zoom in Prezi Next you have 2 options: you need to add a Zoom Area or choose an object (image, text, shape or anything in your Prezi) to be zoomed into. The both options can only be accessed from the Animations menu.
Option 1 – Zoom Areas
Click the Animations menu in the top header of Prezi editor and a right sidebar titled “OVERVIEW ANIMATIONS” will open. Click the small blue + button to make a new animation and choose “add zoom area”. This will add an invisible frame into your Prezi. This is much more like a frame in Prezi Classic. Move the frame anywhere inside your Prezi and define the zoom area. Resize the frame by dragging it from the corners and rotate it the same way by holding down Alt + Ctrl keys at the same time.
Option 2 – Zoom to Object
This option is better if you want to zoom onto a specific object in your Prezi, for example an image or text. Click on the object to select it, then right-click with your mouse and choose “Add animation”. This will again open the animations sidebar. From the sidebar choose “Zoom to”.
After creating the zoom animations you can always rearrange them by simply dragging or dropping the below or on top of each other.
The Difference?
The difference between the two zooming options is quite obvious. When you choose a certain object to be zoomed into, then you might later change the position of the object but it will still always zoom into that same object. However when you create a zoom area, you can insert different content inside that frame or resize it as you wish. You can also move the frame to a different location.
Important: before using these zoom methods you must know one thing. If you use these zoom animations as slides, then they won’t be accessible from the left sidebar, where the regular slides from your topics are. The truth is there is no easy way in the edit mode to enter and edit these slides. This must be a bug by the Prezi user interface design team (no cookies for you guys) and will most likely be fixed in the future, however the current scenario is the following: you can create deep zooms to highlight details, but there is no way in edit mode to “jump” to that slide if you want to make any changes. You must first go into the presentation mode, then enter the slide you want to edit and click Escape key to enter the edit mode. This is the only way to quickly get onto that slide. The other option is to be in the edit mode and scroll with your mouse 50x times to get to get to the zoom area and if you rotated your zoom area then it might even more difficult to edit it, because it won’t flip into the correct position.