The Fastest Way to Make a Cinemagraph in Photoshop

Photography Tips

We love the odd cinemagraph effect, and most of us have probably tried it at least once, if just for the kicks. If you haven’t experimented yet, here’s your chance. This tutorial from Howard Pinsky shows you how you can create a cinemagraph using Photoshop and video footage:

Steps to Make a Cinemagraph

1. Open Photoshop and drag your video into it. This opens the timeline of the video in Photoshop.

Drag the video on to Photoshop to reveal the timeline

2. Press the space bar to play the video. Don’t like the background? That’s what we’re going to work on next.

duplicate the timeline layer and drag it to the top of the layer stack

3. Use Control / Command J to make a duplicate of the timeline layer.

4. If the duplicate appears just after the original timeline, it needs to change.

5. Check the layers panel and drag the copy layer on to layer stack. Now you can drag the duplicate layer around.

the duplicate and original timelines are now matched

6. Drag the duplicate timeline layer back to match where the original timeline starts.

Rasterize the duplicate layer

7. Next we need to freeze the annoying background. Right-click on the layer and select Rasterize Layer. Then add a layer mask.

Select a brush to paint over the sections you need to show movement

8. Select the brush tool and choose a soft black brush. Paint over the area that you don’t to be frozen in the final cinemagraph. You can preview the results by pressing the space bar.

The final step is to render the video

9. Now click Export, select the format (Pinsky suggests H.264), give the video a name, and click Render.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully created a cinemagraph in Photoshop.