Animate old photos

To animate an old photo, scan or photograph the print, upload it, choose a blink and a smile, a slow look around or a slow push-in, check the box and press Animate the photo. A five-second clip comes back in a few minutes, asked to keep every face and the photograph's grain and period. Make it with any DreamBench plan and download the MP4.

The model is asked to keep every face, age, hairstyle and outfit as they are, but it invents every frame after the first from a small, soft print, so a face can drift over five seconds, most on a tiny face or when a head turns far. A blink and a smile keeps faces closest and a large, sharp scan helps most; compare the clip with the photo before sharing.

No. By design, the prompt asks that nobody speaks, sings or mouths words, and for nothing but a faint room tone. Making a real person, living or not, appear to say something is not what this tool does.

Yes. Everyone in the frame can move: the people blink, breathe and smile slightly in the same clip. The smaller a face is, the more it can drift, so a group of four or five large faces works better than a class photograph of forty. For a big group, crop to the people who matter and animate that crop.

Not every time. A model may decline a photo with a child in it under its content rules, and a very small or faint print gives it little to work from. A declined photo is tried once on a second model; if that declines too, the run is refunded.

Yes, in other ways. MyHeritage's LiveMemory turns a photo into a five-second clip on its website and apps; its older Deep Nostalgia moved one face. Google Photos' Photo to video adds subtle movement, a limited number a day without paying, in some regions; Canva's Image to Video takes an old photo too. None asks the model to keep the print's grain and period, as every clip here does.

You can animate damaged photos, but the damage moves with the picture: a tear or a scratch across a face warps as the head turns. Repair tears, creases and stains with the AI photo restoration tool first, then animate the restored picture. A faded print with no tears can go straight in and keeps its tones.

A few minutes for one five-second clip, and the page shows it as soon as it is ready. If the first model declines the photo, a second one tries once, which adds a little time; if that one declines too, the run is refunded. The page waits up to fifteen minutes, then stops the run and refunds it.

There is no single best one, and DreamBench doesn't rank tools. Google Photos' Photo to video makes a limited number of clips a day without paying, in some regions, from photos backed up to it. The old photo animator here needs a DreamBench plan: you create an account on the way, the button shows the price in credits first, and the clip keeps the print's grain and period.

Yes. The page runs in the browser on an iPhone, an Android phone, a Mac or a Windows PC, with no app to install. Photograph the print flat and evenly lit, or choose a scan from your camera roll, and the result downloads as an MP4 you can save to the phone and share in a family chat.

The animated photo has sound, but only a little: the clip is made with sound, and the prompt asks for a faint room tone with no voice and no music, so it sits under whatever music you choose. If the first model declines the photo and the second makes it, the clip comes back silent, because that lane makes no sound. Either way nobody speaks.

Use this page for an old photograph: its prompt asks for the grain, tones and period to stay, for every face, age and outfit to be kept, for small movements and no speech. The AI image to video tool runs the same five seconds on the same models, with natural movement, a push-in or a pull-back, and suits a recent photo, a pet or a landscape.

About 720p, five seconds, MP4, in the photo's own shape: a portrait scan gives a vertical clip. There is no 1080p or 4K option on this page, and a scan larger than 2048 pixels on its long edge is scaled to 2048 before the run, so scan large for the model's sake rather than for the output.

No visible one: nothing is drawn over the picture. The MP4 carries a label in its file data saying it was made with AI on DreamBench, with the picture and sound untouched, so apps that read such labels can tell. Re-saving the clip in another app can drop that label.

Your own family's, or photos you have permission to use, and never a photo of someone without their consent; for a person who has died, that means their family's agreement. You confirm it with a box before each run. Every clip is labeled as made with AI, and the link under it reaches us if a clip should be removed.

Yes. Under the clip, Continue as a story opens the DreamBench composer with the photo as a reference, for a longer film of several gentle shots with music. The composer shows its price before it makes anything.

Each run uses 69 credits from your DreamBench plan. Starter, $9.99 a month, includes 1,100 credits a month, about 15 runs of the Old photo animator, plus AI video. A run that fails is refunded.

Yes: a free account and a DreamBench plan. The tools are part of every plan, from Starter at $9.99 a month.

A photo up to 40 megabytes: JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC or another format your browser opens. A photo straight from a phone is fine, an iPhone's HEIC included: the page scales a large picture down to 2048 pixels on its long edge before the run, so the result is never larger than the page says.

Yes. Under the DreamBench Terms you may use what a tool makes for personal and commercial purposes, including advertising, monetized content and work for clients, with no separate commercial-use upgrade. The Terms don't guarantee copyright in a result or clear another person's rights in your upload, so only use photos you have the rights to.

No. DreamBench doesn't use your prompts, uploads or videos to train or fine-tune AI models, and any future training program would be opt-in.

It stays in your browser until you make a result. Then it is used to make that result and nothing else, and removed from the tool's storage after seven days along with the result. A result you keep in your library stays as long as you keep it.