How to use Scale Action to scale up an image in Keynote without loosing quality

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If I have a really high resolution image in Keynote, and I shrink it down to start out small, and then use the scale up action (animation) to make it big the resulting image is pixelated and low quality, even if the image was scaled up to its original size (before it was scaled down).

This is the same for both vector and raster images.

Is there a way to scale up an image without losing image quality?

Best Answer

I found two workarounds for this, but both are a pain.

  1. The first is to replace the scaled up image after the scale action completes. This works pretty well, but during the scale process you can see the loss of quality until the regular image replaces it.
  2. The second is more complicated, but produces better results:
    1. Start with small scaled version of the image (image A) where you want it. Apply any Build In animations on it.
    2. Have a full size image (image B) with the opacity set to 0%.
    3. Have a Scale Action on the image B setting it to the size of Image A.
    4. Add a Opacity Action on image B to 100%.
    5. Use a Disappear Build Out on image A.
    6. Then use the Scale Up Action on Image B to the new size you want it to be.

This produces perfect results, but as you can see is very complicated. I created a little video to show the steps and the results.

Video showing steps to scale up image without loss of quality.