Bring your family photos to life

Countless apps can digitise old pictures, and there’s no shortage of spiffy photo editors. But Motionleap offers something unique: the ability to bring old shots to life with subtle animations, such as rolling ocean waves or a whisper of steam from a coffee cup.

Here’s how we applied a few Motionleap tricks to magically animate photos that have been in the loft for decades. (Some effects require a Motionleap subscription to unlock.)

Get started by importing a photo taken outdoors into Motionleap and tap Sky at the bottom of the screen. The app will detect where the sky begins and ends in your photo, and let you insert a digitally rendered one of your choice, complete with realistic-looking clouds that magically move across your image.

To fine tune the look, tap the sky of your choice twice to bring up settings such as Opacity and Horizon.

Want to bring motion to a photo of an ocean, river or pool? Tap the Water button to automatically add animation to your image. Motionleap usually does an amazing job of auto-detecting the edge of the water in the photo, but you can adjust if needed by using the eraser (to subtract from the selection) or the brush tool (to add to it).

Sometimes the biggest impact comes from the slightest change – even a subtle flicker of a candle on a birthday cake. To achieve this effect in your image, tap the Element bottom and scroll down to the Flicker Flame section. Resize and position it on your image and voilà – an image brought to life.

You’ll find more than two dozen effects in the Element menu, including subtle smoke and steam, a colourful flurry of butterflies and a full-on fireworks show to help you animate any New Year’s photos.

Waterfalls are among the easiest natural features to animate in Motionleap. Add a level of wow to your image by selecting Animate > Path. Then trace a path of falling water from top to bottom of your image, and tap Play to see how it looks.

Notice more than the water moving in your picture? Tap Anchor and place pins on the areas you want to remain static.

Your final image can then be exported to your device, shared to social media or, coolest of all, saved as a live wallpaper for your iPhone or iPad.

Motionleap: AI Animate Photo

Photo Editing/Animation/3D Art

View