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The best apps for making videos from photos

The best apps for making videos from photos
Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

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According to Facebook users on the social network engage with videos an awful lot more than they engage with photos. Furthermore, we’ve now also got social networks like Snapchat and Tik Tok that encourage users to create short and snappy videos and photo videos to share across the network. We’re transitioning from a photo first world to a video-first world. Hell, we might even be living in a video-first world right now and we simply haven’t caught up yet.

It isn’t easy for many of us, I included, to simply create fun and engaging videos at the drop of hat. If like me, you’re still a photos first person, you will be looking to make videos out of your photos. Today, we’ll walk you through some of the best apps to help you make videos from photographs.

How to make videos with pictures

Below we’ve laid five of the best ways to turn your photographs into slideshow-like videos. You don’t need impressive video editing skills or experience. These Android and iPhone apps, programs, and websites have all been designed to be user-friendly and with ease of use in mind.

MiniTool Movie Maker

Our top choice today is the MiniTool Movie Maker, which offers a fantastic and free solution to anybody looking to turn their photos into videos. What stands out about the MiniTool solution is that it gives you the freedom to create your movies without imposing a company watermark. Normally, these tools make you include their branding on free versions and will only remove them if you pay for a premium version.

Other standout features of the MiniTool Movie Maker app, which is available to download on Windows include fun and easy to use Hollywood-style movie templates and an impressive array of effects including transitions titles. Editing tools to go with your slideshow capabilities include splitting and trimming clips and combining multiple clips together. When you’re done and your video is complete, MiniTool can export your creation to all major video file formats.

MiniTool Movie Maker Download now
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Google Photos

Google Photos is a great tool for making videos out of your photos. The app is so good at making videos from Photos that it can do it by itself. Google Photos can automatically group your photos together, based on a number of different categories it can recognize, and then add music and transition effects to create short videos from your pictures. This means that once you have the app installed on your Android phone or tablet, or iOS iPhone or iPad you’ll automatically receive notifications from the app telling you whenever it makes movies from your photos.

These automatic movies are great but obviously you’re going to want to make your own too. There’s nothing stopping you at all from making your own photo slideshow movies using Google Photos and you can include all the cool effects that go into the automatic movies too. These features include music, text, transition effects, and even Google Maps integrations showing where you were when the photos were taken and even including your travel details too.

Google Photos Download Google Photos
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Slideshow Maker

Slideshow Maker is another video editor for Windows 10 that offers a lot of video editing features that will help you take your static photographs and give them a new life. Similar to the MiniTool Movie Maker, Slideshow Maker has some really great features including slow-motion effects, color filters, and more. Impressively, Slideshow Maker is even capable of outputting videos that can work with VR headsets too.

Another key feature of Slideshow Maker is that it is free although you will have to deal with a number of adverts if you use the free version. Another negative point that you need to consider is that the app isn’t compatible with MP4 video files, which is a very common video format. If most of your files are MP4, you might want to look at one of the other apps on today’s list.

Slideshow Maker Download now
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Photo Slideshow

This classic Windows program offers a wide array of professional-level movie-making features. The kicker here, however, is that the program isn’t free, and you’ll only get access to its features for a very short free trial period.

If you do decide to go with Photo Slideshow, however, you’ll get access to features like transition effects, music tracks for your slideshows, face focusing effects, and even animation. The animation effects, in particular, add a lot of possibilities to your videos allowing you to pan in and zoom into your photos. Other cool animations adding vignettes and retro film-like effects to your movies too.

Photo Slideshow Download now
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Animoto

Our final solution today for turning photos into videos is the Animoto site. Animoto does have professional and team plans but, fortunately, it also offers a free plan for casual users like you and me. The only catch with the free version is that your videos will include an Animoto watermark. If you don’t mind that, however, then Animoto offers a simple solution that doesn’t require you to download any apps or programs at all.

What’s great about the Animoto solution is just how simple it is. You will have to create an account on the site but once you’ve done that everything will run smoothly. All you need to do is select the template you want from the many available on the site and then upload your photos. After that is just a case of putting your photos in order and letting Animoto do the rest. If you’re a technophobe, then we suggest you look at Animoto as it couldn’t be simpler to use and still impressive results.

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney is a news reporter for Softonic, keeping readers up to date on everything affecting their favorite apps and programs. His beat includes social media apps and sites like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat. Patrick also covers antivirus and security issues, web browsers, the full Google suite of apps and programs, and operating systems like Windows, iOS, and Android.

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