Your iPhone has been quietly recording a second and a half either side of every Live Photo for years. Most of that footage never gets used, because three seconds of shaky capture is not a video anybody posts. Rigel uses that moment as a seed instead of an end product.
What Rigel does with a Live Photo
You pick a Live Photo, describe what you want to happen, and Rigel generates a new 5–30 second clip: the subject moving naturally, the camera moving deliberately, and an environment that matches the prompt. It is not a slow zoom over a still, and it is not the original loop stretched out.
The reason a Live Photo is a good starting point is that it captures a real, unposed instant — a half-turn of the head, a laugh beginning, hair still settling. That is exactly the kind of motion that reads as genuine when the model continues it.
What you can generate from one
- A natural animated portrait — blinks, breath, a head turn, hair movement, with the person still recognisably themselves.
- A change of scene — the same subject on a beach at sunset, in a rainy street, in a studio with dramatic lighting.
- An expression — a smile that arrives, a laugh, a reaction shot.
- A talking clip — add a script and the subject speaks it with realistic lip-sync. See talking photo.
- A story — several scenes stitched into one piece. See long AI video.
How to do it
- Open Rigel and upload the Live Photo. Any Live Photo, portrait or still from your library works.
- Describe the shot in one sentence. Say what moves, where the camera goes and how it is lit — "slow push-in, she turns to camera and smiles, warm window light."
- Generate and save. The clip lands in your camera roll ready to post.
Being specific about camera and light is what separates a good result from a generic one. Mood adjectives are much weaker instructions than "handheld sway" or "single warm key light from the left."
Which Live Photos to pick
Choose a sharp, well-lit frame with the subject clearly separated from the background. Faces should be unobstructed and not tiny in the frame. Group shots, heavy motion blur and very low light are the three most common reasons a result disappoints — and re-generating the same weak source rarely fixes it. Swapping in a better photo usually does.
The same principles apply to still images of any age, including scanned prints; if that is what you are working with, animating old photos covers the specifics. For the general workflow behind all of this, see photo to video.
Cost and requirements
Rigel runs on iPhone with iOS 16.6 or later, and on Android. It is free to download and includes starter credits, so you can animate a Live Photo before deciding whether to pay. Credit packs and a subscription are available in-app, and each generation shows its credit cost before you confirm it.
Pick the Live Photo you have looked at most this year. That is almost always the one worth thirty seconds of generation.