SlideMagic is getting smarter. As of version 2.6.4, the software will analyse images before pasting them in a slide and suggest a good crop, taking into account what’s in the image (which you can always change and override later). if your image is in “auto crop” mode, it will continue to adjust things when you change the aspect ratio of your slide, or make changes to the slide layout.

For example, if you start of with a 3 x 1 grid of images and move to a 5 x1 one (you added two new members to your team for example), the images will have a narrower aspect ratio. SlideMagic now tries to re-crop your images automatically to make sure everything lines up properly.

Below is a search result when you search for “portrait” using SlideMagic’s built-in image search engine. Various images show up in different aspect ratios. See what happens when you select one with a horizontal and vertical aspect ratio. SlideMagic puts them both more or less correct in the shapes of the slide. (The crop is pretty good, the sizing of the headshots could be slightly more uniform, you can fix this manually by fine tuning with the zoom slider).

Auto cropping is not always perfect, but at least I have put in the infrastructure in place now to upgrade its capabilities over time. Results are best with images with a very strong separation between the subject in the foreground, and the background in which it is placed.