Time isn't particularly generous or forgiving with photographs, and a good portion of our efforts focuses on repairing and/or restoring them. The folks at MyHeritage can work real miracles with their old photo enhancer, but today they want to show us something more: how to animate photos of people using their brand-new Deep Nostalgia system. Drag the photo, and let its artificial intelligence do the heavy lifting.
Moving the static, with artificial intelligence
We already know well that with proper training, an AI can interpret, repair, optimize… and even invent. Organic forms, strange colors, landscapes, faces. In many cases, its results are chaotic, and one could even say ridiculous. But if the goal is clear and its training material has superior quality, even the most skeptical will be surprised.
With that in mind, we move to the genealogy portal MyHeritage, which we already know for its excellent enhancer of old photographs. Its latest project is called Deep Nostalgia, and it all starts with a question: Have you ever wanted to know how to animate photos of people? Deep Nostalgia lets you do it easily, in a matter of seconds.
How to animate photos of people with Deep Nostalgia
From a certain point of view, Deep Nostalgia might remind you of the Live Photos feature in iOS, but its direction is completely different. All Deep Nostalgia asks of the user is creating an account at MyHeritage (or alternatively, using Google credentials), and dragging or manually uploading the photo to process. Deep Nostalgia will perform several adjustments that improve the final quality, and assist the algorithm in creating the animation.
For example, one of the details the system identifies is the general orientation of the person, as well as the direction of their head and eyes. In seconds, Deep Nostalgia presents the finished animation, and a link for downloading it in MP4 format, which makes it much easier to play and share online. This result is also stored in your personal gallery, where you can apply alternative animations (with the occasional error, and several distortions).
In summary: Some limitations, but…
As expected, Deep Nostalgia has certain technical restrictions. The most relevant is that we can only animate one person in the photo, since there's no "group processing" so to speak. On the other hand, the animation is limited to the head, eyes, and neck (i.e., no animating cars, horses, or people playing soccer). Finally, the free mode of Deep Nostalgia is exhausted with five animations, and if you want more you'll have to enter MyHeritage's subscription. Still, we think it's a notable "demo", and time is on its side.
Official site: Click here
