alright so in this tutorial you will be
seeing how to bring a photo to life hey
what's up ladies and gentlemen
I'm Ignace Aleya and by the way if you
like that intro that you just saw and
made a shorter version on that and a
complete template that goes along with
it for either Premiere Pro and Adobe
After Effects which you can download
completely for free with link in the
description below so if you want that go
and grab it right there and apart from
that today we will be seeing how to
bring a photo to life and a 2.5 D 3d
effect inside of Adobe After Effects
this technique is super easy to do so if
you're a beginner no matter what you
will be able to follow along with this
tutorial so without further ado let's
jump right into Adobe After Effects
alright so for this tutorial I prepared
three files which you can download with
link in the description so you can
follow along with the exact same footage
as I am so right here you can see a
clean plate image which is a photo of
yeah the background without any
character and right here you have a
photo exactly the same as a clean plate
but with me in front of it and then I
have a cutout image I wish I actually
cut out in Adobe Photoshop but if you
want to cut it out yourself that's why I
included the original file so what you
actually have to do is when you want to
record this when you want to do this
effect go up shoot something and try to
shoot on a tripod to your shirt there is
no movement also try to shoot on a
manual exposed image and also be sure to
keep the focus and the exact same spot
as your character right here so make up
your setting yeah take some photos of
your character and then let them leave
the frame and take a another picture of
your background that's just gonna be an
easier way to work with you can still
recreate the background if you don't
have a clean plate I do have another
tutorial on that I'll link it in the
description below if you want to go a
little bit more hardcore but it is an
older tutorial so it isn't as clear in
this as this video so
but without further ado I will show you
how to cut it out in Adobe Photoshop now
we will continue and jump into Adobe
After Effects to do the effect itself so
quickly
how I do this is I import this image in
Adobe Photoshop then I will go to simply
on a quick selection tool I will zoom in
a little bit and just make sure that we
draw around my arm my t-shirt pants okay
the other arm there we go and then the
face and there we go we can see that it
quickly kind of selects everything that
we need right here and the glasses maybe
we want to do that layer because it's a
little bit easier with a simple kind of
pen tool to remove those so get
something like this going maybe also
right here you can just select a little
bit more there we go for the hair it
also fix this a little bit later so once
you've done that make sure you also cut
out by holding alt in between the arms
so you actually remove a selection
holding alt and just by selecting more
use like more so and then also right
here alt and to remove this part okay
select and mask here we can refine our
kind of mask right here so very easily I
will change my smoothness to 30 and I
will remove my shift edge a little bit
down so we actually remove a little bit
of the effects around my image and there
we go and then it will also zoom in a
little bit on my image and then what
this refinement tool what you can do is
make it a little bit bigger and going to
etch and detection and then just enable
these smart radius and just go like five
pixels or something or like two pixels
might be a little bit better there you
go
and then just select around the hair so
we're going to do something like this
okay it doesn't have to be perfect once
you're satisfied click OK and then we're
going to click over here on create a
mask layer so there we go we have our
character cut out and of course you can
go and click on this mask layer where
it's black and white and now we can use
our pen tool to zoom in here and
actually draw around yeah or sunglasses
and get something like this there we go
and I'm going to close my mask right
click and go for a make selection click
OK and then change the color to black
and hold alt backspace that will fill on
that mask well actually that selection
with black and there we go so now we
have a nice selection of just me without
a background so what you didn't do is
now go ahead and save this as a PNG file
so we don't have a transparent so we do
have a transparent background and then
save that and now we can jump into Adobe
After Effects so here I will import my
footage so go to import file maybe make
it around seven seconds and click OK
then we will bring in our clean plate
into our composition but as this is a
photo of a higher resolution we can
actually right click and go for a
transform and fit to the width of the
composition so that will actually resize
it completely then we can also bring in
our second image and bring it on top
here and do the same things to transform
for the width there we go so now we have
our image and I kind of remade in Adobe
After Effects if we're going to fit it
to the work area we can see no animation
whatsoever we just have a simple image
like so now what we want to do is
actually toggle the switches right here
until we see this 3d option for these
two layers what we want to do is enable
for both of these layers a 3d layer then
we want to press p on the keyboard for
the background and we want to kind of
increase the z-axis so we actually want
to kind of push this background into z
space so maybe something like 10,000
would work fine
and there we go once you're satisfied
with the results you can increase the
science holding shift of your background
maybe overlap it a little bit here of
the canvas it doesn't really matter but
there we go we have a new background and
our character in front so of course
again nothing changes what I wanna do is
create a new camera and in After Effects
you can create a new camera that allows
you to animate actually in a 3d world
and as we have enabled these two layers
to be 3d they're actually separated from
each other so I'm going to create a new
camera I'm going to click OK I'm going
to drag it up here and I'm going to
press P on the keyboard and then hold
shift and press R on the keyboard which
will and yeah kind of reveal the
position and the orientation settings
right here make sure your time scrubber
is at the beginning of your timeline now
we will create a keyframe for both the
position and the orientation then go all
the way till the end of your timeline
and now we can animate it completely
like you want so we can kind of zoom in
maybe a little bit and as you can see we
immediately create some kind of parallax
you can see that something is going on
here which makes it a little bit more
that kind of lifelike and then we can
also rotate it if you want to so it's
completely up to you
maybe something like this so we have
this photo now kind of zooming in but
our character is kind of zooming faster
than our background which gives it that
kind of parallax effect which is really
cool to have in photos and video ok so
next what you can do is to make it even
crazier is we can animate our character
in a very subtle way for example moving
the head up a little bit or moving the
arms closer to his body or whatever you
want but very subtle animations we can
actually do inside of Adobe After
Effects to click on your cutout image
and then we're going to go over here and
select our puppet pen tool so that's
control P and if you click on that we
can actually click on our character
right here and maybe right here and here
just try to make kind of a joint
kind of setup so right here to head the
neck shoulders the chest the elbow and
my arms here so on each position where
the joint joints are supposed to be try
to make kind of a point okay and there
we go so now we did all of this what we
can do as well is we have the mesh shown
right here and the expansion set at 194
actually I want to set the expansion to
zero and that will make sure it wraps
around perfectly around our image so and
now we can individually animate our arms
now if we press U on the keyboard you
will see that you have a bunch of
keyframes created for each individual
joint if you select all of these we can
actually move them all the way till the
end because at the end I want actually
to have this animation and this position
like I am there right now then at the
beginning of your timeline we can
actually go ahead and animate it but I'm
not gonna show my mess and mesh so I can
actually concentrate on the image itself
I'm actually going to move it a little
bit closer or actually a little bit
farther away we can do that as well
and as you can see we're actually doing
a great job animating our photo now and
there we go and now if we're going to
preview this we have a very cool
animation one last thing that we can do
in our animation to kind of spice it up
even more and that's where After Effects
comes in because we can do a lot of T at
things in Premiere as well but After
Effects just allows us to do a bunch
more effects so if we go to the effects
& presets right here we can search for
the Bulge effect and apply this to our
background and here we can actually drag
this if we select this actual dot here
in the corner
we can actually make it bigger and just
like this and there we go and instead of
a positive value in the Bulge height
we're going to do something like minus
0.7 and this is doing going to do some
kind of zoom out kind of a warp effect
which is really cool and if we check pin
all edges it's actually not going to
distort the edges here but we can also
make it maybe a little bit bigger by
increasing the vertical and the
horizontal okay so now we have this kind
of effect and if you do this at the
beginning and kind of create a keyframe
for the Bulge height here in the
beginning go all the way till the end
and set it back to zero we have a little
bit more animation going on in the
background which makes the image a
little bit cooler even so yeah that's
basically it
alright so that's it for this tutorial I
hope you enjoyed it if you did give this
video a like also be sure to subscribe
to the channel for more and hit the bell
icon so you get notified when I upload
videos also check out our website we
have a bunch to offer for filmmakers and
motion graphics artists and apart from
that I hope to see you in the next one
goodbye
