They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a GIF is worth a million. Or something to that effect, anyway. Google’s taken that to heart and launched Motion Stills, a new free iOS app that takes your Apple Live Photos and turns them into smooth looping animations.
After you capture a live photo (basically a short video) on your iPhone, Motion Stills will figure out optimal start and end points to create a smooth loop and also separate the background from the foreground to ensure that your frame doesn’t look janky.
The app can generate GIFs or even movie montages from your shots. You can also share your creations on social networks and browse other users’ motion stills too.
The results look a lot more interesting than what you get with Instagram’s Boomerang looping image tool, and it seems like there’s more room for creativity with Motion Stills.
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Google says its app utilizes the same image stabilization technology that helps create animations from photo bursts, but the cool thing is that it does so right on your mobile device, without having to rely on data centers in the cloud.
The company adds that Motion Stills is an experiment; if people like its functionality, it could be integrated into other products like Google Photos.
You can try it for yourself by grabbing Motion Stills for free from the App Store.
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