Fantamorph is a fun, easy-to-use product that enables you to effortlessly render image morphs with a few clicks of a button. Image morphing is the seamless transition from one image to another.
Morphing was popularized in Michael Jackson's "Black and White" music video and is a routinely used special effect in movies where one actor's image morphs into another actor's image. If you can remember the original black and white movie, "The Wolfman", then you may remember actor Lon Chaney morphing into the Wolfman through time-lapse photography. It took them hours to achieve this magical transition, but now you can achieve the same results in minutes with
Fantamorph.
We tested this slick graphics tool on a 500 Mhz machine with 384K RAM and achieved acceptable results without a problem. The interface is very minimal but quite intuitive. To use
Fantamorph, you first select and load two different images. It should be noted that while any series of images can be morphed, the best have similarities such as two photos of different people or two photos of similarly shaped objects, say a plane and a bird.
Once your images are loaded, you begin to place "key dots" over the images. Key dots define how
Fantamorph
will transition between images. Typically they are used to indicate locations of similar elements. For instance, you might add key dots over eyes, noses and mouths. This would tell
Fantamorph
these are the key areas to morph. You start by placing key points on your first image. A matching key dot will appear on the second image, and you simply drag it to an appropriate location. The more dots you add, the smoother your morph will look. Advanced edit features enable you to zoom in and manipulate your key dots when they are in close proximity to each other.
One of the best things about Fantamorph
is your ability to preview your morph in real-time. No wasted time on rendering. Even better, you can export your morph to
Flash, AVI or animated GIF formats. Movie size can be set, and you can set the morph to auto-loop or reverse.
In addition to morphing between dissimilar images, you can also animate a series of images to create a winking or smiling photo. This can create some very cute morphs for personal use.
Lastly, to give your morph a more polished look, you can also add a foreground, background or mask to frame your morph. For instance, for morphing photo portraits, you can apply an image of a picture frame. For a transition of a place to a bird, you can add a sky background.
With Fantamorph
you are limited only by your imagination. Based upon this tool's performance and ease of use, we give it a
Gold Award. For more information, click here.
