SlideMagic swaps instantly between traditional and widescreen aspect ratios. The slide content stays nicely in the slide frame, everything stays aligned and you can revert instantly.

Because SlideMagic does not distort aspect ratios of images (no stretching or squeezing), the positioning of an image changes slightly if you switch between a narrow and a wide screen layout. This can be annoying for images where positioning is a big deal (compare the lined up eye lines of a series of portrait images versus a long-distance shot of a mountain range). If you switch aspects 5 minutes before your meeting, your presentation is misaligned. (This is obviously still a lot better than PowerPoint where everything would stretch and move to unpredictable places when picking a different screen format)

Well, SlideMagic fixed this last hitch as well. I just released V2.3.17 (download SlideMagic here for both Windows and Mac) which now keeps 2 sets of image size and crop frames, one for each slide aspect ratio. You switch back and forth, so will the image positioning. Make sure to double check each image once in both aspect ratios, and the settings will be saved together with the presentation.

For future releases I am studying more advanced image analysis, where I could automatically recognise a face in an image for example, and lock in the position of the eyes (maybe the first true “AI” application in SlideMagic).