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Live Portrait brings photos to life

Video attached to photo link when phone held over it

Ann Nester shows how the Live Portrait app works with a photo of the Ripley High School Volleyball team. When a smartphone is held up to the photo, a video plays of the players. (Photo by Jeff Baughan)

RAVENSWOOD — Lurking within the confines of your smart phone is an app store. Hoo-rah, you already knew that.

Among those apps is a freebie which calls itself Live Portrait. The software makes the picture come alive — literally. It can be a lot of fun. It is certainly entertaining if it is used as a greeting card. Informative if used as a business card.

Ann Nester of Ravenswood, owner of Ann’s Location Photography, who uses the process, explains, “What this allows one to do is take a video, up to two minutes in length, and attach it to a picture with a Live Portrait link, and then watch the picture come to life when you hold the phone over the picture.”

Nester produced examples of the product made with Live Portrait as the Ravenswood High Choir group picture, when placed under the phone with the app, burst into song; the Ravenswood High cheerleaders broke into cheer, spelling out “R-H-S” with their pom-poms; the Ripley High volleyball team broke from its team pose into a huddle and then ran toward the camera to introduce itself; a realtor gives a tour of a home from her business card; a business owner gives a description of services offered from a business card. There just has to be a picture on the business card.

“The link to the card or picture is good for three years,” she said. “The video can be changed to the picture, card, billboard, year book… whatever. It’s done by the screenshot linked to the picture.”

All this sounds like fun, as long as someone else is doing the production work. It’s here where the process becomes technical and a bit expensive. Come on, you knew it would go down this green-colored brick road.

“The process was developed in California and has slowly been making its way across the country,” said Nester. “It was introduced to Imaging USA in Atlanta in January as part of the Professional Photographers of America convention.”

Even though the process end result can be viewed with a phone or tablet, the video recording is best with at least a 4K camera. The quality of ‘1080p’ HD footage is only 1920 pixels across. The 4K camera is more than twice the pixels across.

Panasonic Lumix GH4 4K is the only single lens reflex camera in appearance in the epfilm.tv top 10 4k camera list. The camera has a 16.05 MP Digital Live MOS sensor.

“The megapixels are the determining factor,” said Nester. “You have to have high quality equipment to get the megapixels needed to get the effect.”

After the camera, then a person needs editing software and that’s going to require Photoshop and Light Room. “You can edit the video and show whatever you want on the video,” Nester said. “You just have to know how to do it. This process sounds easy, but it’s not. The people who developed this, sent a team to Japan to work there. I was texting people in Japan with questions about this. Probably drove them nuts but oh well.”

Nestor said the initial outlay of funds was between “$3,000-$4,000 before we made the first print.” Told you it was going to get expensive.

She added a Live Portrait is more expensive than the normal portrait because of the video recording and video editing work. Then there is the link fee to Live Portrait for the video storage. The link is good for three years but you can end the link whenever you want.

“The possibilities are endless for someone wanting to send a Live Portrait to a relative or someone. It can really be used for business purposes. It’s like putting a commercial on a business card. It’s putting a video greeting on your Christmas card. It makes you get noticed in a whole new way.”

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