Plotaverse
Powerful cinemagraph app
Free/$4.99 to unlock features/subscription from $19.99 monthly From Plotagraph Inc, plotaverseapps.com Made for iPhone, iPad Needs iOS 10 or later Cinemagraphs, done right, are spectacular. For the uninitiated, a cinemagraph is a partiallyanimated photograph — think a portrait of a person with clouds whizzing overhead, for example.
They’re hard to make, so thank goodness for Plotaverse, an amazingly powerful iOS app that allows you to mask the areas of an image you want to stay still, choose the areas you would like to move, as well as the direction and speed you want them to go, and create Live Photos, GIFs, stickers for iMessage, or images ready for social media.
The app is split into two pieces — Plotaverse is a social network in which users post their animated images, while Plotagraph is the part of the app you use to create new work. Plotaverse has plenty of inspirational images, but Plotagraph is where the magic happens.
Masking and animating images can be awkward — masking off someone’s face (or worse, hair) on a touchscreen is challenging, although we appreciated the picture-in-picture to let you mask areas under your digit. Using smaller brush sizes also helps, but pro-quality cinemagraphs do require work to get right. Once you’ve worked up an image you can return to the app to change elements of its masking or animation.
With the free version, the small Plotaverse watermark is overlaid on all exported images. But a subscription removes this and unlocks all of Plotaverse’s animated overlays (snow, rain, and fog, among others, are free).
There are various subscription plans, including one-off payments, monthly billing with or without contracts and annual contracts — check the website for a full list of prices and deals. Whether these appeal will depend on your enthusiasm for cinemagraphs. However, if you can tolerate the watermarks, Plotaverse is great even without its optional extras. The bottom line. A fun, technically challenging app capable of truly eye-catching results.