Subtle beauty is so in this year!”īelow are some images created with the cinemagr.am app to give you an idea of how subtle, moving images are already being used: While sites like Pinterest and Facebook do not support animation in any image, your website does and it is a simple (and more importantly), new way to stand out.

Without being obnoxious like animated GIFs, cinemagraphs can capture attention in an extremely beautiful way. We wrote this spring, “Imagine using a cinemagr.am photo on your blog or website with a very subtle picture of water moving in a pool or trees in the breeze for a real estate listing, or perhaps a customer playing with her hair in your bookstore. We’ve shared with you two free and simple methods to create your own animated gifs without having to use Photoshop or a professional photographer, and we’ve highlighted Cinemagr.am, an iPhone app that creates stunning cinemagraphs right on your smartphone that can be used on your website or blog.

They’ve come a long way and are now being used in advertising in a more beautiful, subtle way in the form of high quality photographic images combined to create subtle, moving images that catch the eye when you visit a site (called a “cinemagraph”), but they are no longer designed to overwhelm and look like an annoying car auction with police lights flashing, rather slight movements as illustrations or as a gorgeous attention grabber. Do you remember opening any website in 1997 and seeing obnoxious animated gifs on the sidebar with dancing clip art stick figures, or poorly animated spinning graphics in elementary colors? They’re the reason so many cringe at the idea of any animated gifs, which are images that play in a continuous loop without having to hit a play button.

How to make moving backgrounds