I have been sharing a lot of plotagraphs recently (not only here, but mostly on my Instagram account) and some long time ago I shared also cinemagraphs here. Since the results are quite similar, I would try to explain what the difference between these two approaches to animated photographs are. Let’s first look at plotagraphs.

Cinemagraph

With a cinemagraph, you start with a video. On this video, you choose which areas are moving, and what is a static image. This can be done in Photoshop, or one of the many available applications (it’s more popular in mobile apps). So in the end, you will have the clip repeating in a part of the image, with all the rest just being from a single frame.

This is one of my older cinemagraphs. (sorry for the lower resolution, I just could not find the original file :/)

Cinemagraphs are harder to do, as you can’t just go back to your old photos and decide to animate them in this way. You already need a video, that was taken very stable (preferably from a tripod) and that has a nice loopable movement in it.

Even if the results are similar, the way they are done is quite different. They work better for different situations, and the results will also wary a lot.

About this site

Here and there I get questions what I used to make this blog, and what plug-ins I use, so here is a list for those curious :)

• WordPress instalation – this blog runs on a self hosted wordpress intalation
• Amory WordPress Theme – currently I use the Amory theme, even if I used it more for the base layout, and I tweaked quite a lot of things about it
• Instagram feed plugin – thats the instagram feed at the bottom of every page
• Max Mega Menu Pro plugin – for the nice responsive menu on top
• Slider Revolution – for the big slider on top of the homepage
• Disqus plugin – this one is of course for the comments
• Contact Form 7 – I think the name explains this :)
• Mailchimp – for the newsletter
• PanoPress – for the few 360 photos that are on the page
• WP Super Cache – the caching system of the page, which in theory makes it faster
• Yoast SEO – the SEO of the page
• ConvertPlug – for popups when I need to add them
• Zoomify – zoom in plugin for huge panoramas

And thats almost all I use, there are few smaller one time things here and there, but nothing of much interest :)

Plotagraph category

You may have noticed that there is a plotagraph category shown over all the posts that include a plotagraph. And if you want to see all of them, scroll down to the bottom of the page, where you can find a Photos by location dropdown menu.

Just choose it and select Plotagraph under Articles.

I posted many posts recently edited with the Plotagraph Pro, and today I wills share with you my thoughts on it, and if it’s something you may consider purchasing.

Ease of use & interface

Plotagraph Pro is focused whole on a single result, so the interface is quite simple. On the left side you have all the tools you need to start animating (and in a logical order) on the other side you have finishing touches, like brightness/contrast, crop, watermark and similar. Most of the editing is just switching between the brush and animation points anyway.

All tools have their shortcuts, but to tell the truth, I can’t get over that Space is not pan, but it starts the animation. It’s just so learned from Photoshop, that I keep on triggering it each time I want to pan (and I can’t find the pan shortcut, just the switch to the hand tool :/)

One can get started really quickly. There is a tutorial video on first start (or from the menu) and that explains all the basics. Or you can check out my guide here. There is a bit of a learning curve between the first animation and the first good looking animation, but with a bit of experimenting it’s not so hard getting there.

Speed

In editing process, the software reacts quickly, just the masks take a few seconds to redraw. As I mentioned, the rendering is done on the server. So when you hit play, it takes mostly around 10-20 seconds for the preview to start (at the highest quality). It is faster if you lower the preview quality of course.

When you want to export a result, it goes into a separate rendering list. Here it can take quite longer for your result to be ready. Depends a lot what format you want, how long the duration is and whats the resolution. Still, most of my exports were ready within few minutes.

Pricing

This is the biggest gripe everyone has with Plotagraph Pro, because as it’s a service, you can’t just buy it outright. When they first offered it, they only had a full year price (297 USD), and that discouraged even me from giving it a try. But after few months they introduced also quarterly (79 USD) and later also a monthly pricing (29 USD), so now it’s much easier and cheaper to just pay for a month, to try it out.

Is this for you?

That’s a hard question to answer. It can create some were beautiful results with little work. The repeating videos look great shared, like I do here, or for instance on Instagram. On the other hand, it’s not really cheap, and you have to keep the subscription if you want to continue to use it.

But I would suggest giving it a try. The monthly subscription is affordable enough to try it out, to see if you find use for it.

Points, points and more points

It’s quite fun to edit photos with Plotagraph Pro. It really reminds me of those newspapers in Harry Potter movies. The little bit of movement really changes how a photo looks.

And it’s not even that hard. Just check out the guide I posted few days ago. I will also do a video version, but that will be later, as I caught a bit of a cold, and my voice is quite horrible right now. And of course, a review is also in the works.

To the side you can see a screenshot of how this photo looked like when I finished editing it into a plotagraph. It all just about adding animation points. And many of them :)