Flash – Moving Still Photos
I’ve decided to try and create an effect that I had seen before in documentaries programmes where still photos contain a moving image of a subject.
I used 2 old photos that I had taken from gigs many years ago, the first photo is of the band Travis and the second photo is of the band Ash.
I think moving still images works best with performance type of photos as it’s more dynamic and the movement makes the image come more alive. I carefully chosen photos that had a subject in front and a background that had some interest.
I began the piece by creating a layer mask in Photoshop to mask out the band members and putting them into a new layer that’s separate from the background.
Content Aware was used to roughly fill in the background layer hidden behind the band members as some of these area will be seen when the photos starts moving, I also used the healing brush and stamp tool to further clean up the background.
Click here to see the final separate images.
After getting the images all separated, I imported them into flash to create the moving animation. The animation could be done in any other software such as Premiere, Indesign or even Powerpoint.
The concept is to increase each image size of the separate parts and have them moving at an opposite direction to each other, making it look like the camera is moving.
I’m pleased with the final result, It does seem to bring static photos to life.