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Cinemagram app for iOS makes art out of animated GIFs

Cinemagram app for iOS makes art out of animated GIFs

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Cinemagram is a new iOS app which created animated GIFs from your movies. It apes the functionality of an older app called 'Kinotopic'

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Cinemagram and Kinotopic
Cinemagram and Kinotopic

Cinemagram is an iOS App from Canadian developer Factyle that creates Cinemagraph-style GIFs on your iPhone or iPad. Cinemagraphs are artistic takes on the animated GIF — carefully pieced together from hundreds of high-quality images, they usually consist of a fixed perspective, generally static scene with limited movement. Cinemagram simplifies the process significantly. You shoot a short clip using your device's camera, choose the few seconds you want to work with, mask out the area(s) to be animated, then apply one of four filters of your choice.

The app works best when your device is completely still, and although our tests didn't work fantastically, some users have already uploaded some beautifully constructed GIFs. Things are far from perfect here however, and the app is missing a host of options that we'd like to see in future updates. The editing tools aren't precise enough, there are some tearing issues in some images, and there's no way to make your images private, so everything you produce is out there for the entire world to see. However, there's one issue with Cinemagram that can't be fixed — we've seen it all before.

Kinotopic_medium

Another app named Kinotopic (originally entitled Kinemagraph), was first released in December and has already over 130,000 users. The app creates the same .GIFs as Cinemagram's effort but includes some extra functionality such as access to your camera roll, video stabilization, and a more precise editing tool. One thing missing from Kinotopic is filters, but the developer has a new version on the way which will bring a set of 12. Both Kinotopic (free) and Cinemagram ($1.99) are available in the App Store now, and are compatible with all iOS devices capable of recording video.