Liven up your photos with this app

VIMAGE is a multimedia application that lets you enhance your photos by creating a living photo. A living photo is a hybrid of photo and video done by overlaying pre-made looped animation effects on your still images. It offers a fun yet simple way to experiment with your pictures to make it stand out. Moreover, it gets some of the same benefits of short videos on social media, such as longer viewing and higher engagement.

Changing your creative process

Using VIMAGE is like adding filters on your Instagram photos. You select the image from your gallery, choose one from the catalog of more than 70 built-in effects, and then edit the effects. Among the editing processes that you can do is repositioning, rotating, and duplicating. You can also mask and remove the effects, as well as adjust the speed, color, blur, brightness, and saturation. You can do all these using the simple slider controls. 

Once you are done, VIMAGE will generate a video file in MP4 format, which you can save on your phone or share with your social media accounts. The free version allows you to overlay one effect to a photo with a prominent watermark. The photos edited using this version will also have a lower resolution. To add two or more effects and to remove the watermark, you need to buy the premium version. Both the free and paid version lets you create as many living photos as you want, however. 

VIMAGE is a tool for users who are not that knowledgeable in advanced image editing software. However, while it simplifies the process of creating living photos, it does come with some usability issues. The most frustrating one is the lack of calibration in the mask tool. You touch the screen in one area, but the masking effect registers millimeters off. This hard brush control results in some obvious and unconvincing effects. It also does not help that some of the effects are not that useful. 

A great photo editing tool

Despite the usability issues and limited effects, VIMAGE is still a great photography tool. Not only does it help in livening up your photos but it can also be good for rebooting your old ones. More serious photographers may turn to other apps like Flixel or Plotagraph because all the elements in the photo are theirs and not pre-made. However, if you are a novice user, VIMAGE is your best bet to have an outstanding living photo.