Morph Age 5by L. Davenport

Morph Age is a program that will Morph images together - similar to the morphing faces in Michael Jackson’s old Black and White video. In addition, Morph Age will Warp (deform) a single image - treating it like clay that can be pushed and pulled to distort its image. The resulting morph/warp can be saved as a still image, a TIFF Image Sequence, or as a QuickTime movie.

When you start, you are presented with a window that has three empty panes. Simply drag the images that you want morphed into either of the two left panes. The images that you bring in to Morph Age are also listed in the upper right hand corner of the window (Figure 1). You can grab one of these images and move it up or down to change the morphing order.

Before you can morph your images, you must identify the facial features on each subject. You can do this fast-and-dirty by drawing ovals around the head, eyes, mouth and nose. Or you can be more precise by using Morph Age’s Bezier Spline tool to drop points around the head and facial features. As you draw your ovals or drop the points in the first image, corresponding points appear in the second image. Since no two faces are alike, you next need to drag each group of points around the second image so that the head, eyes, nose, and mouth match up. Once Morph Age knows the matching points/features it can easily morph between the images.

As you start inserting, pulling and pushing points around the faces, you can immediately see if you are getting the desired results in the right-most pane. This is a preview window which will show you how the morph looks in real-time. Also, at any time, you can tap the play button to see the first image slowly morph into the second image.

Morph Age can also animate different parts of the image at different times (first the eyes, then the ears, then the mouth and so on).

In addition to morphing one face to another, Morph Age can also morph one animal into another or even morph inanimate objects. Such as morphing a convertible into a car with a roof (Figure 8).

You can use Morph Age’s “Layers” to specify which areas sit on top of the other. If you look at Figure 3, you will see the chin of a man enlarging over his neck. If this wasn’t set up as layers, as you

Figure 1. Morph Age can morph an image of one person into another. The Preview image (on the right) is about ⅓ the way through the Morph.

Figure 4. Morph Age can be used to Warp a single image. It can also colorize different parts of your image.

Figure 2. Morph Age can also morph between multiple faces (I don’t know the limit, but I have morphed up to 5 images). The resulting QuickTime movie shows a slow morph between all of the faces.

Figure 3. Using Layers, you can morph one area (the chin) without distorting the rest of the image (the neck & shoulders).

drag on the bezier curves to elongate his chin, his neck and shoulders would likewise distort.There is an option to gradually change the color of a certain area. Figure 4 shows a male face

changing from normal skin tone to green - à la the Hulk™.Morph Age’s Timeline lets you set the duration of the transitions (bottom of Figure 2).

Testing• My first morph was very simplistic - I made circles around all of the facial features. This worked fine for my first try.

• In my next morph, I used the Bezier tool to more precisely put points around the head and features. But I soon discovered that the shoulders didn’t gradually morph between the two photos. They would just pop into view. So I added points to include the shoulders and then they slowly raise and lower between the two photos.

• In Figure 4, I enlarged the man’s head and eyes, and broadened his nose. I then raised his eyebrows, made his mouth drop at the corners, and changed him to green.

• In Figure 5, I narrowed the top of the man’s head, raised the eyebrow on the left, lowered the tip of the nose, elongated the earlobes, raised the height of the chin, widened the mouth, and gave it a slight drop at the corners. So as you can see, Morph Age lets you treat a face like clay that you can push and pull.

• The remaining screenshots in this review show you some of the other morphing and warping tests that I performed.If you learn better by watching than by reading, you will be

pleased to know that the Creaceed web site has quite a few video tutorials that show you how to use Morph Age. They also give you several picture and movie examples of morphs between people, between people and animals (some of the stills can be seen in Figure 7), and even between cars.

Rendered still images can be copied to the clipboard or saved as a TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG. Morphs can be saved as TIFF Image Sequences or QuickTime movies (with the user setting the quality and frame rate).

The SkinnyEvaluation: Morph Age is very easy to use. You almost don’t even need to read the manual. Though you do to learn the finer points of the program. I was surprised that not only can you morph between two images, but you can morph between multiple images (Figure 2). Rendering was pretty fast and I really had a lot of fun with this program. I think you would too.Requires: Mac OS 10.11 - 10.15, 64-bit processor.Company: CreaceedStreet Price: From Creaceed’s web site or from the Apple Store: $49.99Available Demo

Figure 5. This is another example of warping a face. Figure 6. Morph Age can be used to morph animals too, such as morphing a cat into a lion.

Figure 8. Morph Age can be used to morph inanimate objects such as morphing a convertible into a car with a roof .

Figure 7. Two more examples that show the gradual morphing between a lady and a tiger and a man into a lady.