About Us
Stills in Motion, LLC makes personalized 3-D Motion Photos using proprietary software and a specialized printing technology called lenticular. Our company’s roots are in lenticular printing, so we are able to create these high quality 3-D Motion prints on a made-to-order basis.
About Lenticular
One of the most well-known examples of lenticular printing are the prizes given in Cracker Jack snack boxes showing flip and animation effects such as winking eyes. Modern examples include direct mails, trading cards, and advertising graphics (like the kind often seen in airports) that change their message depending on the viewing angle.
Here’s how it works
When a customer places an order and uploads photos to our website, our artists take those photos and run them through our custom software suite, which electronically slices them into narrow strips and re-assembled in alternating order. This process is called interlacing.
We then print out this interlaced image on archival photo paper and mount it to a clear plastic sheet. The front of the sheet is not flat, but bumpy with many long, thin ridges that run along the surface. These ridges are actually lenses called lenticules. These lenticules act as miniature magnifying glasses, magnifying only one set of the strips at a time (depending on the viewing angle) and effectively blocking out the other set. When the viewer moves, or if the picture is turned, a different set of strips is visible, and the printed image appears to change.
What about the “3-D” part of 3-D Motion Photo? We make text and other elements in our designs appear to float above the photos. We achieve this effect by slowly moving the words in one direction and the image underneath them in the other direction. The lens does its job by showing a slightly different image to your left and right eye, tricking your brain into seeing depth – no glasses needed!
