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What are cinemagraphs?
A cinemagraphs is a still photograph in which a small and repeated movement occurs forming a video clip. These can be published as Gifs or other formats to give the illusion that the viewer is watching an animation.
Why do we use cinemagraphs?
Cinemagraphs tell stories and grab the viewer's attention more than a still image, yet they are still shorter than most videos. These are a great option to add to one's social media feed, marketing campaign, or blog post.
Inspiration
When first researching cinemagraphs I thought these were really cool. I liked how the picture was still but there was still a subtle movement in them that looped. Like in these ones to the right the person riding their bike yet the city behind them is still or the bubbling of the food and champagne. So I took these as inspiration for creating my own cinemagraphs as well as many others on my pinterest page.
Early Attempts
This was one of my first cinemagraph attempts. After looking at inspiration I was very intrigued by the ones that had water in them so I tested one out for myself. Although this was taken in the wrong direction, it should have been recorded as horizontal video instead of vertical, it still didn't turn out that bad. There are some point where you can see it glitch but I able to work on that and do better for the next cinemagraphs
Next Attempts
When going to create my next cinemagraph videos I had many ideas of one that I wanted to create. However when doing anything there are always ones that don't workout and I had many of those. These images shown below are also attempted cinemagraphs that did not workout as well as I had hoped
Candle Getting Put Out
For this one I had wanted to show the candle being frozen with the flame still lit but the smoke, from it being blow out would still be moving. However when filming this video beside it being in the vertical direction instead of horizontal, everytime I blew out the candle the smoke would fade away too quickly so when trying to edit it, there way no for it to loop or anything because the video was only 1 second long. These are not animated they are just pictures of the video I was going to use.
Leaves Blowing in the Wind
For this video I wanted to have the plants blowing in the wind but this time i did not have a tripod so the camera was shaking and when editing the video, trying to layer mask some if the leave it was too windy and you could see that it was being cut when the leaves would move outside of the layer mask. These are not animated they are just pictures of the video I was going to use.
Car Driving By
I thought this would be very cool as the car started out of frame and would drive out of frame again making this video easy to loop. However when trying edit it similarly to the last one it was a very wind day so the large tree to the right was blowing so it would either block the car when towards the end, or would move outside of the layer mask so some of the leaves could be seen. These are not animated they are just pictures of the video I was going to use.
Duplicate Layer
Create Layer Mask
Quick Selection Tool
Rasterize Video
Editing the Cinemagraph
When creating a cinemagraph you first want to start by importing your video into photoshop. Then you want to move the video out of that layer group so it is in its own later, and duplicate it so there are two layers of the same video.
Then you want to take the quick selection tool and click any parts that you want to stay frozen during the cinemagraph.
Next you will click layer, layer mask and reveal selection. This will keep the section you want free to move after doing the next step.
After that you want to find the part of the video you think looks best to stay frozen and select layer, rasterize, video. This step will freeze the rest of the video that was not previously selected. After you are done with all of this you will have your video and you can make an edits to the length of the video to make it loop. Or if it is not looping you can use the scissor tool to cut the video and add a fade to loop it.
Most Recent Cinemagraph
This was one of my most recent cinemagraphs. When creating this one my original plan was to have the flame of the candle frozen and the reflection of the frame in the glass moving. However when trying to edit this, this flame gives off such a bright orange light that it was easy to tell that it was it was being edited and you could see the line from the layer mask. so instead my roommate is in the background of this video and was moving her leg so I chose to change my idea and went with that as the moving part of my cinemagraph instead of the candle. I actually Like this one more this way because I think the candle moving is the expected thing so to have be still is a surprise to the viewer.
Another More Recent Cinemagraph
This is another more recent cinemagraph. This was created using the same process and the one used above. There is still a flaw with this as the water is moving so quickly that when trying to make a layer mask from the water it creates a hard edge were you can see the layer mask ending. I hope to re edit this one and see if I can make it blend better, so it will overall be a more flawless video.
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