What is Morphing?

Image morphing is an image processing technique used to compute a transformation, or "metamorphosis", from one image to another. The process is called "morph" for short. The idea is to create a sequence of intermediate images, which when put together with the original images, represent the transition from one image to the other.

Morphing software allows you to transform one image into another, giving the appearance that the first image "becomes" the second.

Morphing software is especially appropriate for genealogical use because it enables family historians to see how an ancestor may have looked during different stages of his or her life. The video clips generated as an end result of the morphing process often invoke an emotional response as family members watch the image of a grandparent almost instantly age from that of a youngster into a senior citizen. Morphing software can also be used to help identify individuals pictured in unmarked photographs or to approximate how a grandchild will look as an adult.

Image morphing is often used for educational or entertainment purposes. Image morphing techniques have been widely used in creating special effects for television commercials, music videos and movies.

In a morphing sequence between two faces, the middle image often looks strikingly life-like, as though it was a real person, but clearly it is neither the person in the first nor in the second image (see below). The image in the middle is half influenced by the left and half influenced by the right image.