A Quick Guide To Photo Animation
Stopping the social media scroll is important for getting your brand’s message across. But it takes more than just a beautiful image to get your audience’s attention.
Consider adding photo animation to draw their eyes as it takes less than 1/10th of a second for animated content to grab attention. Once you learn to animate photos, you have a new tool to tell your stories and express creativity.
Let’s take a look at your options when you want to animate a photo to create something unique and eye-catching.
Add Motion
Your primary means of adding animation is to add actual motion to your photo, which can take a few different forms depending on your particular photo editor. Some of the more common options would be:
- Zoom in or out
- Pan across
- Fade in
Each of these changes the location of the image in some fashion whether by shifting it or making it appear. If you can control the speed of the change, you can ensure it fits with your brand style or message. Fast movement might catch the eye but not be the best fit with a brand associated with calm.
Your editor might allow you to add multiple pictures in a collage. When animating that graphic, all the photos move together giving the feeling of more movement without making things move faster.
Add Effects
Some animation effects don’t move your image but change it in some fashion that can draw the eye. Some common options involve color changes like adding a color overlay or fading the image from black and white to color. Your choices for the overlay should tie into the overall color palette you’re using for the graphic.
You can also choose to take your image from a blur to sharp focus. This works well for posts where you plan to do a reveal of a new product or to announce an upcoming sale.
Add Extras
Your photo editing software might even give you options that involve adding animation to the photo without changing the photo itself. This allows you to draw attention and add features to supplement what’s in the image. You can also change the extra without changing the picture and have a whole new graphic to post to your channels.
These extras include animated stickers or GIFs that sit on top of your image. They might allow you to add shooting stars to a sky or bounce a ball across the screen. Others involve text animation where you can flash your message or make it slide in from off-screen.
Grab Attention With Photo Animation
Getting your images to stand out in the social media crowd can be as simple as adding a little photo animation. A lot of photo editing software includes this function these days, which makes it easy to make your image move, change colors, or draw attention to text. Dive into the world of animated photos to increase your social media engagement.
Looking for more photo editing ideas? Check out other articles on our site for tips on how to edit a photo and get the most out of your photo editor.