IMotion Pro

Shoot a masterpiece frame by frame. $5.99 | FINGERLAB.NET

If you’ve tried to make stop-motion animation, you may have been daunted by the patience needed to do it justice. Reproducing Wallace and Gromit takes lots of time and a steady hand. But with iMotion Pro for iOS, much hassle is removed.

The latest version, 4.0, is highly intuitive. Start a new movie and you’re taken to the settings page where you can choose to shoot square or widescreen footage, in 720p or 1080p, by rotating your device. You can select manual control with a single tap (the go-to for stop animation), and alter the threshold of the microphone to capture audio.

There’s an option to shoot time-lapse footage and the shutter interval can be set from as short as 0.1 seconds up to an entire day. It’s all very slick. Such ease of use extends to the shooting of video. You’re given access to a range of tools such as a light, a series of grids for lining up your shots, and both exposure and white balance controls. While you can control focus manually, autofocusing works well in adjusting the camera before snapping away.

The accompanying free iMotion Remote app enables you to use another iOS device to control the camera. You can control everything from there, from the focus to the exposure to the grid. The app is strong for editing, too. Aside from speeding up footage and deleting and reordering frames, you can add images and audio. Music from your library must be saved to your device and be unprotected by DRM, though. The app’s new ability to duplicate and rename your videos is welcome, and the export facilities remain strong thanks to a wealth of options.

All in all, iMotion Pro is a fun and highly usable creative tool. With simple methods of motion and time-lapse capture, and intuitive frame-by-frame editing, it will have you making stunning animations in no time.