Product Reviews

Morphing - creating smooth transitions between pairs of images - has been around for years. The third version of Morpheus Photo Animation Suite brings together three applications in one, allowing complex morphs to be constructed with relative ease.

Morpheus follows the standard methodology: place a series of marker dots on your starting image, pinpointing the features and then reposition them to fit the end image. Morpheus will instantly blend the images together, showing a movie of the morphing process and allowing you to specify specific steps to render to high resolution.

Each dot placed appears in a different colour, making it easier to spot which one you're moving. You can also draw straight lines and connect multiple dots with lines.

Morpheus can also warp a single image, using the same method: essentially,

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this works as if you had the same start and end pictures. By moving the dots on the end picture, you distort it to follow the lines of the dots. The problem here is that Morpheus internally connects dots into triangles and distorts each triangle whether morphing or warping. In Warp mode, the hard edges are especially apparent; it takes a large number of dots to smooth out edges, which involves more work than should be necessary.

The final part of the equation is Photo Mix, which blends two images together by adjusting the transparency of the first so that it fades into the second. It's the least useful of the three, offering an awkward solution to a problem more easily solved in Photoshop.

Where Morpheus stands out is in its ability to more than just morph between pairs of images. Any number of photographs can be added, and the same dot-for-dot procedure used to morph or warp smoothly between all the images; you can set the number of frames per second, the render quality, the render direction and looping methods. The final result can be exported as still images or movies.

Although the morphing capabilities are good, and the ability to combine multiple morphs and warps in a single file is welcome, Morpheus is badly let down by its clumsy interface.

Morpheus is a powerful application, offering more capabilities than most morphing programs; but its shortcomings are often too frustrating.