Before we get into these apps that literally make live portraits, a crash course into everything live portraits might help.
Live Portraits
Everyone loves a good picture, photogenic folk and otherwise. With live portraits, pictures are more than just smile and click click get ready for your kodak moment. Your pictures basically come to life.
Photos are no longer static and they can be dancing, singing, thanking – whatever it is you want them to do really. This technology blends augmented reality with image recognitions to bring images to life through smart devices. You can turn your portraits into live moments that will be treasured for years and years.
By definition, a live portrait is an image and a video that have been linked together in the cloud. When you boot up a live portrait app on your smartphone and scan an image, the video that is linked to the image will play.
Live portraits have come in handy for schools with no more plain old static photos in yearbooks. Through augmented reality via a smartphone camera, it is possible to add a video element to every photo in the yearbook.
How It Works
Live portraits breathe new life into any still photo. The whole live portrait uses a driver video to animate a person in a static photo to precisely match the driver’s head movement, emotions, voice and facial expression. It is all based on artificial intelligence, bringing a whole new dimension to images giving them a fresh, new perspective.
I hope by now you have your tux on and your yearbook quote ready. What happens is a student sits down for a portrait and then for an additional 10, 15 second video interview during the school picture shoot. When printed on the yearbook, they look like regular pictures and the magic happens on your phone. If you load up the app and point your camera at any of the photos, the interview video I mentioned pops up in place of the photo and starts playing. It’s a very neat magic trick.
This service isn’t just applicable to yearbooks and school pictures and video can be embedded in any photograph. Are you a photographer looking for a way to spur demand for your services? Live portraits just might be your answer.
The brides at a wedding, graduates on their big day, actors needing headshots, they all will thank you for breathing new life to their photo needs. You could even use it for holiday cards: mouth or yell Merry Christmas!
Let me put it this way: imagine all your studio creations coming alive in your customers hands. All they need is to download a live portrait app, fire it up and scan the photo to watch the magic happen. It just could be the edge over your competition you have been looking for.
Specifications
There are of course some specifications that both the image and video have to fulfill.
Image
The image should be a JPG or a PNG. If it’s a PNG, it needs to be an 8 -bit or 24-bit. If it’s a JPG, it must be RGB or grayscale. The image size should be less than 2.25 MB and at least 320px in width so the app recognizes it.
Video
The video should be in either MP4, MOV or WMV format and be under 20 seconds in length to maximize playback functionality and viewer attention span. The video should also be 25 MB or less in size because it will load faster. The smaller the video, the faster it loads in the app.
Step by step breakdown
First you will need to create the photograph and video of course. The photograph should be still and the video should be under 20 seconds.
The next step involves uploading both the video and photograph to a ROES. A ROES is a remote order entry system where you basically create your orders and send them to a lab that specializes in all matters photography. It’s quite easy to use so the logistics shouldn’t scare you that much and you can be sure of a great experience placing your live portrait orders. Your video and photograph will be linked within 24 hours and sent back.
The last step is just installing a live portrait app on your smartphone, point it at the photograph and the video will be played.
