If you like Cinematographs, you are going to love Plotagraph. This new program is an incredible photography tool that can take any still image and animate it into a beautiful looping GIF or video file in anywhere from five to 30 minutes. Created by photographer and artist Troy Plota, Plotagraph has already been put to use for several large companies, including Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Airbnb.
Traditional cinemagraphs are created from videos, but Plotagraph can achieve a similar effect with only a single image, eliminating the cost (or time investment, for DIYers) of a video shoot, as well as allowing existing images – and even historical shots – to become animated.
"Cinemagraphs originate from video footage and requires specific video production which adds considerably to the costs. This also greatly limits the amount of available footage. Plotagraphs are free from the constraints of video which makes Billions of images available to bring to life at a fraction of the price of any other process. "
The web based desktop program allows users to mask out a stationary object, then add animation points. By moving those points, the user tells the program how those areas should move in the final file. That gives the software the ability to customize the motion, unlike a traditional cinemagraph that simply copies the movement within a video. Plotagraph can turn any single JPEG into a flowing animation and exported as a GIF, MP4, or MOV file through a patent-pending combination of specialized imaging algorithms.
While the terms and a few tools will be familiar to Photoshop users, the software appears to be fairly simple and intuitive enough to learn quickly.
Source: DIYPhotography