What photos should I use?
- 👀 The eyes, chico. Both of your subject’s eyes should be visible and gazing in the same direction in each photo (directly towards the camera, for example) for best effect. If your subject is looking in many different directions throughout your photo album, the resulting video will appear less fluid.
- 👯 Photos can include your subject solo or joined by others. Photolapse will automatically make your subject front and center.
- ⚙️ Your subject’s face can be tilted to any degree. Photolapse will automatically rotate the image so that their face is horizontally even.
- 🔬 Your subject's face can be any size within the broader photo. However, if your subject's face is extremely small (for example, you upload a photo of them standing in front of a large waterfall), we'll have to zoom in to make their face size match the other photos. This can result in this particular photo appearing blurrier than others.
- ⚖️ Each photo must be smaller than 20MB to be included in your video (most photos taken on a phone meet this requirement). When uploading photos through the upload box, we’ll tell you which ones were successful and which ones weren’t. You can fix the unsuccessful photos by re-uploading a smaller version before moving to the next step!
Any tips for gathering good photos quickly?
Gathering your photos may be both the most fun and time-involved step. We recommend finding plenty by using these solutions:
- 🍎 Apple's Photos App: Apple did the hard work. Photos App recognizes the faces of people in your photos and groups them together. Use built-in “People” albums to view photos of individual people. You can cherry pick the good photos from here to drop into a new album that you’d like to use for your Photolapse.
- 🤖 Google Photos App: Google did the hard work. Google's Photos recognizes the faces of people in your photos and groups them together. Use built-in “People” albums to view photos of individual people. You can cherry pick the good photos from here to drop into a new album that you’d like to use for your Photolapse.
- 📸 Old school: Flick through old family albums and digitize photos you want to include. Organize a digital album that you can pull from when creating your Photolapse.
How do I control the length of my video?
Video length will always be the [number of photos you upload] times [seconds per photo] times [number of times you see each photo]. When you adjust these settings in the video-editing workflow, Photolapse will show you the estimated length of your video.
How is the order of photos determined?
Photolapse will automatically order your photos by your subject's age, from youngest to oldest. Age is estimated using face detection software.
Any tips for post-production and getting ready to share with friends on social media?
Your photolapse video may be just the starting point for your creative project. We've seen users add their videos to other software and add background music or filter effects from there. We're excited to see the variety of different ways Photolapse video clips are used by our community!
Your photolapse video will be downloaded with an aspect ratio (width and height) of 16:9, which is a common format for videos viewed from a desktop computer. This format also allows you to post your photolapse to Instagram or TikTok. These platforms will simply crop your video to a narrower aspect ratio of 9:16, while keeping your subject's face front and center.
