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today we'll break down the process of animating photos in after effects into 4 main steps.
Transforms, Distortions, Puppet Warping, and Enhancers.
The first step to animate your photos or portraits is usually the most important. In order to really get a convincing effect, we need to separate the layers of your photo into a foreground, middleground, and background (the more layers the better though!) The reason this is so important is because by separating the layers of the photo, we can space them out in z space so that when we move a camera through the scene, we get parallax, which sells the illusion of real depth to our scene. Our new camera motion is going to reveal the original foreground and middleground layers that are in our background so we have to deal with that using the clone stamp tool in after effects and paint them out! (If you have photoshop you'll have a much easier time of it though)
After that we tackle distortions. The point of this step is to introduce subtle changes or morphs to our photo to make it feel less static and more alive. There are a lot of distortion effects that we can use to pull this off. Liquify is a go-to for distorting facial features, but there are also loads of others like the mesh warp, turbulent displace and wave warp to name a few.
Next we get started with the puppet warp tool so that we can animate/distort parts of our photo with more control. The puppet warp lets us keyframe each pin we place which gives us more control than most other distortion effects. This is usually used to move limbs or the body of people in our photo that we want to animate.
The last step is for all the extra little touches we can add to make our photo feel more alive, like adding camera shake, particle effects to simulate snow or rain, lens flares, and other stuff like that.
Following those 4 steps, you can get some really nice results and turn your photos into some nice crispy animated content! And that's how to make an animated photo in after effects! Making a cinemagraph in after effects is really easy to do, but the more time you put into it the cooler it'll look! I hope I was able to teach you how to animate a still photo in after effects (also known as the parallax effect). Also you're probably wondering why I'm writing so weird but it's to get some good ol search terms in the description haha
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timestamps
0:00 - Intro
0:45 - Step 1: Transforms
5:23 - Step 2: Distortions
8:47 - Step 3: Puppet Warp
11:53 - Step 4: Enhancers
tags-
after effects animate photo, adobe after effects, after effects tutorial, after effects, animate a photo, parallax effect, parallax, how to parallax effect, how to animate photos, cinemagraph, cinemagraph tutorial, how to make a cinemagraph, create a cinemagraph, cinemagraph photoshop, cinemagraphs, photo animation, puppet pin tool, motion graphics, animate still photos, 2d to 3d, animate photos
