Hey guys, Ben here and in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to bring your
photographs to life. Using an amazing app I discovered which is now on iPhone and
iPad, not Android just yet. But it will be very soon. And hey, If you're watching
this video a month or two from when I made it, it very well could be ready by
now. And this one is called PLOTOGRAPH, this is essentially an animation
tool that starts with a photo. You might have taken on any kind of camera. Yes, I'll
teach you guys how to make 360 and turn them into tiny planets. But you can do
them with any kind of photo. I found that this has been an exceptional tool for
tiny planet. I posted my very first plotograph just four days ago and in
that short amount of time it spreads like wildfire. There are now thousands of
people across Instagram and Facebook now posting their tiny planet plotographs.
That's been awesome to see because to me I think it says that there's an awesome
crossover between tiny planets and Plotographs so in this tutorial I'm
going to show you exactly how to do it using either your iPhone or iPad. Also, good
news for Android users who are frustrated at not having an Android app
yet . You can do this on your computer either Mac or PC.
They also have desktop software.
So, in the first example I'm going to be editing on my iPad Pro which is a nice
big screen to work with. And you want to download the app, if there's a paid-up it
costs $5 in the app store. I'll put a link down in the description but
essentially if you want next-level results you do need to invest a little
bit of money. As you all know, if you've already bought a 360 camera just
investing that tiny bit of money means you can create exceptional photos and
videos. And investing in apps is no different once you've downloaded and
opened it. We're going to go and add a photo to our gallery and I'm going to
choose this photo that I took during my last visit to Fiji. When I just finished
parasailing and I took an awesome 360 photo then turned into a tiny planet. If
you don't know how to make tiny plants, got lots of tutorials on my youtube
channel. If you just go check those out -- wrote a book about it as well. But you
guys already know that. So once you've already manipulated your
tiny planet photo or other kind of photo and you've imported it, now the fun
begins! So, it's a very simple layout and I love the simplicity of this app both
on mobile and desktop. It's so easy to use, I would call it After Effects for
idiots because that's what I am and I sucked big time at After Effects -- so this
is a lifesaver! Firstly you'll notice down the bottom left I have animate
selected, now whenever I press my finger to the screen and drag it across
it creates an arrow essentially. The longer the arrow you create the more
movement is going to happen so with the idea I have here, I want the ripples of
the planet to move towards the outside of the planet so it looks like the boat
is creating those ripples. So, I'm going to create arrows all the way around to
do that. Alright, that's good and straightaway we can already preview that.
If you just hit the play button in the middle -- yes it's animating but it's
distorting way too much. And next step is to hold down the paths that we don't
want to move. I'm going to create a mask which is right next to animate.
I don't want the boat to move I want to stay dead still so you can adjust the
size of your brush -- there and I'm essentially just going to color in the
boat as accurate as I can. It's looking good, might just change the
size of the brush a little bit to get those fine parts. The good thing about
this app is you can preview it straightaway by just hitting the play
button. If you need to make any small adjustments you can figure that out
really quickly. Okay, better! The animation isn't perfect yet around the boat but
it's better than it was before. Now we need to essentially fine-tune our mask
and that's where we can use the eraser tool. I'm going to zoom in and this is
very easy, it's just pinch to zoom and
here we go -- we can alter our mask. It's even more snug around the boat and I
think it's good to give it a whitewash outside of the mask because that means
it's going to be animated later on and move as if the boat is actually moving.
This is really cool! You guys are going to love it. I think I'm ready to
preview again -- let's have a look! Okay, so that mask is better however it's still
dragging too many pixels from the whitewash out in a way that doesn't look
natural. what I'm going to do now is hit the Select tool which allows us to
change the size of our animations and our key points. I'm going to make them
all a little bit smaller just so they don't drag as much with them another
thing we're going to do is around the outside of the planet. We don't want the
waves leaving that and we don't want to distort the horizon line. That's where
we use the anchor tool and just select anchor and going to place points all the
way around the outside. This is essentially like a hammer and nail -- think
about it like that we're nailing down these points so nothing can go beyond
them. But wow look at that -- look at the back of the boat how well it
simulated the whitewash as if the boat is actually moving along the planet.
The whitewash is going off into the distance that's absolutely incredible.
I've got the algorithm so nicely -- fine-tuned with this app that it
simulated that almost perfectly. It almost looks like it's alive! We're so
close so we make some final adjustments now and get perfect. You know what I'm so
done happy with that I think we've got a winner here. Firstly, you can just have a
quick play with the speed to see if you on it faster or slower --
you want to make it too fast. I think a subtle movement always works better.
Let's just have a look -- that actually does work fast but I think around the
middle is ideal because just that subtle movement that really hypnotizes people.
I think that's an excellent speed so I'm very happy with this and we're going
to go ahead and export it now. The sharing options in this app really cool
because they allow you to tailor it based on the social media platform
you're sharing. For me, I use Instagram and Facebook the most so they've already
worked out the ideal length for each platform in a way that it will play back
with the most amount of smoothness for the viewer on the other end. Let's go
ahead and export it for Instagram so three seconds and then it's obviously
going to loop over and over on Instagram. Exports a 1200 by 1200 and we go save to
camera roll -- done!
I'm here on the photograph website and I put a link to it down in
the description. There's a few different plans you can download the
free version to begin with if you just want to get a feel for it however
unfortunately there are too many tools missing from the free membership to
really maximize your use of it. It's a little bit too restricting with things
like key points, anchor points, animation styles -- it's you can't get
the level of specificity as you can with a pro paid membership. When you get the
desktop software you get features that the smartphone and iPad apps don't have.
It means you can do extra cool shit, I guess you want to consider this an
investment -- say if you're a wedding photographer or you work in video or the
photo business and you want to give your clients and your social media followers
next-level content. I've signed up and it's been awesome so far so I would
recommend you give it a go if it's something you want to take seriously and
you see the potential to make money. Honestly, like I said wedding
photographers if you could do something like this to a bride and groom they will
love you forever and they'll pay 100 times the amount that you're paying for
the subscription fee. Stay tuned to the end of this video because I'm going to
give you guys a coupon code that's going to give you 10% off your membership.
Again, the desktop software is just as easy to use as the mobile software.
There's very few buttons and design is very simple and easy to navigate so for
example I'm choosing the image that are featured on the cover of my ebook
Life in 360 A Beginner's Guide to Tiny Planet Photography because I think it's
one of the best images I've ever shot and I think it has awesome potential to
be an amazing little Plotograph as you can see -- it got lots of trees around
the outside of the circle so I've just got a feeling that there's some kind of
awesome movement here whether they all go in towards the middle or they
spin around. There's something amazing waiting here I don't know what yet but
let's have a play and use the extra features that the desktop software has
to create something amazing.
Now how cool was that -- I'm completely obsessed now and I'm going to
be doing these for a really long time. I'm really going to spend a lot of time
now getting good at it. Now that I have a basic understanding and hopefully you
guys too. It's just a matter of practicing and practicing and getting a
bit better each time to the point that soon you'll be able to create
amazing animated photos that high-end media companies are producing for their
social media feed. They'll do it on your device or on your computer very
quickly and easily. On that note, I've got a code for you
guys that's going to give you 10% off this desktop software just click the
link in the description and enter the code LIFEIN360 and you'll get 10% off
your purchase. This is going to be an awesome little investment for photo
editors videographers, photographers of any kind looking to produce next-level
professional content that really gets noticed on social media on Instagram and
Facebook. This is going to be amazing for you so definitely check it out because
I'm loving both of these softwares -- going to be using them for a long time as I
said so definitely get on it while it is still very new and people don't really
know about Plotoraphs yet because that's the easiest way in my experience
to get notice and grow really quickly -- as a creative is doing stuff before
everyone else does! Give yourself the tools to do so. Don't forget to subscribe if
you haven't already. Check us out on Instagram I'm @BenClaremont -- also
Facebook facebook.com/Lifein360photo. I became to hear what
you guys think of this software I think it's absolutely amazing it was just
featured on the Apple App Store as one the best apps available right now.
That's really cool to see because there have been previous incarnations of this
style of photo editing. However they've been at ridiculous price points, I'm
talking like three hundred dollars for an app download which is ridiculous
whereas five or twenty dollars is actually very affordable for a lot of us
professionals that do want that amazing result at a decent price point. Alright,
guys hope this is helpful and I'll see you guys the next video. Bye.