Enlight Pixaloop Review: Effortless Photo Animation for iOS

Lightricks’ Enlight Pixaloop is a popular photo animation app that makes it super-easy for just about anyone to animate photos in minutes. It also comes with sky packs, camera FX, and overlays to give your photos that extra oomph, so it’s no wonder why so many people are loving this app.

With Pixaloop, you can animate all kinds of element in your photos whether it’s a horse running through the field, steam coming out of your coffee mug, or waves in the water. It also lets you move elements in different directions simultaneously which you can use to create unusual and trippy effects like building tiles moving in a loop or a river flowing in both directions at the same time!

One of the standout features on offer with Pixaloop is that it’s incredibly easy to use. Its intuitive system of paths and anchors enable you to easily add animation effects to photos by segmenting them. For each photo, you’ll have a part of the photo that moves and other parts that are frozen in time.

In addition to this, you can play around with Pixaloop’s geometric motion feature that lets you add spinning effects to your photos. For instance, you can create spinning umbrellas or bring old monuments to life.

Animating photos in Enlight Pixaloop

Enlight Pixaloop allows you to add unique animation effects to your photos with only a few taps and swipes. The app supports 16-bit and raw images for processing. Using a combination of anchor points, arrows, and the Freeze brush, you can create all sorts of neat effects.

Here’s a quick explanation of what you can do with each tool:

• Arrows: To add animation to your photos, simply add an arrow to any element in the photo and position it accordingly so that the head points in the direction you want the animation effect to move. Next, stretch the arrow so that it covers the distance you want the animation effect to move before it loops.
• Anchor points: By using anchors in Pixaloop, you can slow down the animation speed in certain areas in your photo. For instance, if you have a photo of a campfire, you might want to control the speed of consecutive flames relative to the smoke it creates.
• Freeze brush: The Freeze brush allows you to stop motion in different areas of your photo to create a dramatic effect. This feature also helps you hold specific elements. For example, if you want to create a spinning umbrella, you would want to freeze the background and the tip of the umbrella.

You can use these tools in combination to create different types of animation effects such as moving water, hair or clothes blowing in the wind, or clouds moving across the sky.

Getting started animating your photos with Pixaloop is easy. Just like with other photo and video editing applications, you begin by choosing the photo you want to add animation effects to. It’s a good idea to go with an image that has natural elements in it. Once you’ve picked out a photo, simply go to the options in the menu and adjust the animation’s loop, play around with the arrows, anchors, and freeze brush, add camera FX for ending your animation with a smash cut, or add grainy film effect to your photos using overlays.

For example, if you want to animate a dress in your photos, simply point the arrow in the direction you want it to flow. You can use the Freeze brush to make sure nothing else in the photo moves. Following our example, you might have to freeze the background and your shoes. Similarly, anchor points will let you reduce the animation speed around different parts of the flowing dress to give your animation a natural look and feel.

Enlight Pixaloop: Pros and Cons

With the increasing number of photo and video apps available on the App Store, you’d ideally want something new that lets you stand out from the rest while allowing you to add stunning effects to your photos. This is where Enlight Pixaloop truly shines.

Pros

• Easy to use. Pixaloop is incredibly easy to use. The interface is intuitive and pretty self-explanatory. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to create just about any type of animation you can think up of in minutes.
• Moving overlays. The Pixaloop app comes with built-in overlays that let you add some personality to your creations. For example, once you’ve animated your photos, you can add a pre-built twinkle overlay or one with butterflies to make your photos look dreamy.
• Neat effects. You can play around with the built-in camera FX features to easily create cinematic magic. This is great for anyone who’s looking to create professional-quality animated photos.
• Accuracy. With Pixaloop, you can animate your photos right down to the wings of birds flying in the sky. Of course, this is only possible if you have a high-quality photo and a good amount of time to dedicate to animating it. Other effects such as leaves blowing in the wind, or water flowing in the river can be achieved with a lot less effort.

Cons

• Need good source photos. One of the downsides of Pixaloop is that you need high-quality photos to create seamless animations. The better the photo, the better your animation will be. It’s also important to pick out a photo with lots of colors and details. So, for example, you’d want to animate a colorful drink in your cup versus plain water or black tea. Check out this page to see the best iOS Photography Apps for the iPhone to make sure you take steller photos before animating them.
• Takes some time to create perfect animations. The Animate feature in Pixaloop is an advanced tool that requires a good amount of time investment to get the look you want. That said, it’s incredibly easy and intuitive to use. To animate an area in your photo, like sand dunes blowing away in the wind, you’ll have to draw a Path that’ll decide the direction the animation flows in and then use anchors and the freeze brush to isolate that section of the photo. This can be a bit confusing for first-time users but it’s relatively easy to get the hang of.

Key Features on Offer With Enlight Pixaloop

Here are some of the main features you can expect to get with Enlight Pixaloop:

Video effects and overlays

• Control movement and animation: Pixaloop comes with built-in video effects and overlays that enable you to control movement and animation. You can also change the speed, direction, and style of animation effects.
• Camera FX for cinematic movement: Its camera FX is great if you’re looking to create cinematic movement in your animations and give a more professional look to your photos. For example, you can use the zoom effect, tilt effect, and Dolly Zoom effect to instantly make your creations surreal and breathtaking.
• Effects and movements: Pixaloop lets you play around with all kinds of fun overlays to add movement to otherwise static photos. This way, you can add emotion to your photos and playfully distort perspective – even if you’d rather not animate them.

Water, sky, and geometric motion animations

• AI-powered water animation: Pixaloop’s iOS version gives you access to an amazing, AI-powered animation feature that automatically adds natural-looking water movement effects to your creations with a single tap.
• Sky replacement technology: The sky replacement feature lets you replace plain skies with beautiful sunsets and moving clouds instantly. The best part is that it’s actually difficult to tell if it’s an effect or if you just happened to take a really nice shot in front of a beautiful sunset!
• Geometric motion animation: Its geometric photo animation tool lets you add effects to different elements in your photos such as buildings, umbrellas, and towers. For instance, you can make an umbrella spin in a still image or add patterned movement to a historical landmark in a photo.

Enlight Pixaloop: Pricing

Pixaloop is free to download from the App Store with plenty of free features that will do wonders to your Instagram Stories. 

There’s also a paid subscription model that determines which in-app purchases and effects you can get access to. Signing up for the subscription gives you unlimited access to certain premium features and content in addition to newly-released tools and future updates.

The monthly subscription for Enlight Pixaloop Pro starts at $3.99 for one month or $19.99 for an entire year. You can also choose to unlock all premium features forever by paying a one-time fee of $55.

Wrapping Up

Englight Pixaloop packs an intuitive interface along with many animation features that let you add life to your photos. This app can be used by anyone who wants to add visually-appealing yet natural-looking animation effects to their photos and rack up Instagram likes along the way.

And with Lightricks releasing new features and updates on a regular basis, you don’t have to worry about running out of animation ideas anytime soon.

Ready to add animation effects to your photos and up your social media game? Let us know which feature you loved the most in the comments section below!