Filtering images has long been the rage. Initiated by Instagram some time ago, it was the technique which made it worth a billion in Facebook’s eyes. Yes, Instagram was acquired primarily for its image filtering techniques. However, whichever image enhancing startup you look at nowadays, the filtering methods & results are somewhat sedentary – nothing exciting or new seems to be coming out, it’s always the same-old, same old (Sepia, Black & White, Pixilate, Dither, Gaussian Blur, Distort…ad infinitum). So, if there was something different out there, perhaps a filtering system that added a twist to the everyday results, that would surely be worth a fair penny, no?
Well, ‘Kapwing’, a video enhancing software house, certainly thinks so, & that’s why it has added a unique filtering algorithm to the standard mix. These guys have developed a tool that converts ordinary still images to video, but not just any video…their technique, based on FFMPEG(video conversion software) & Primitive(Geometric conversion software), turns still pictures into moving images – geometric aware video.
The term ‘Geometric Aware Video’, should be coined at this point because it is, without doubt, a unique spin on image filtering, & the results, as Kapwing points out, “are far from the ordinary.”
Kapwing’s tools are capable of creating a wide range of videos from basic images, each resulting in a moving picture, which is a standalone piece of un-repeatable art. Kapwing has named its tool ‘Motion’, & it’s very appropriate since that is exactly what it does, it creates animations from stills. Basically, the premise behind the technique is to find the colors in an image, turn them into a suitably sized geometric shape, which is chosen from a selection at the outset, then the software builds on the shapes filling out the image until complete. What Kapwing have done, to formulate motion, is to stitch these layers together in an overlapping animation using the power of Imagemagick.
– This is a startup profile based on publicly available material & not a review –
Image Credit: Kapwing
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