Talking Pictures?

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Head motion preview enabled during facial fitting
  • (7 more, see all...)

Did you ever look at the picture of somebody and felt like something was missing? Did you ever wish that a photo would reveal more of that person? Like things that you always knew are particular to her/him and that cannot be caught by the camera.

We live in a fast world and we have the opportunity of taking pictures even with our mobile phones. Great progress has been made in all fields of activity. In the third millennium we can spot planets from other galaxies, cars have on-board computers, 16-bit microcontrollers have been developed, prosthetic retina restore vision in blind people, bionic limbs and eyes (and even a bionic brain has been developed), web-cams with telescope, etc.

In this century, technology has taken such huge steps forward that even ?Superman Returns?. And yet, in the field of photography, no other technological boosts have occurred except for the quality. Today you can take ?raw? images with your camera and process them after the shooting.

Special effects were until not long ago restricted for the public, in the sense that it used to be a long tiresome process carried out in specialized FX studios and only the professionals had the courage to make them. Nowadays, technology has made it simple even for the less gifted of us. Now you can apply special effects from home, on your own photo album.

However, there is a software that has stretched it a step further, allowing its users to apply motion to a still picture. I know it sounds crazy, but so is the program.

The name is Crazy Talk and it is provided by Reallusion Inc. The installation file is 30.4 MB large and the price is $149.95. The software needs a Pentium III CPU of 800 Mhz or higher, at least 256 MB of RAM, 500MB of disk space and duplex sound card/VGA card, mouse, microphone, speaker and keyboard as recommended system requirements.

As for the software requirements, the application needs Windows XP, 2000, Millennium or 98 SE, IE 5 or above and DirectX 9 and WMEncoder 9 (for WMV exporting).

What does this program do? Well, it creates animated pictures from your personal photo album. It also allows the user to record messages that will play along with the moving picture. Crazy Talk's facial morphing technology makes it easy to give life and sound to a picture of you or your friends. You can create animated talking characters and digital hosts for DVD projects, websites and even e-mail messaging.

The interface is user-friendly and it is grouped into sections. The most important ones are the Edit (Model and Script), Output (messenger, greeting, web, media, mobile), Template and Custom, and the Motion Settings (at the bottom).

In Model mode we have the Fitting Tools with Basic Facial Mode and Detailed Facial Mode. These menus pinpoint the anchors for moving the picture. On the right there are some working tools like Import (from disk or from a scanner or digital camera), and Image processing (adjust the colors, crop, rotate and mirror).

The Auto-Fit Anchor button is an important one as it fits the wire frame to the face by using 4 basic points (for the eyes and the mouth) that allow you to create a model in a matter of a few clicks of the mouse.

Under the Auto-Anchor button you have the background mask editing and settings option. The background in this case is the part of the picture that does not move.

At the bottom of the window there is the Advanced Facial Settings button. Here you can do things to the picture such as changing the color of the eyes, the teeth, adjust the inside of the mouth so it looks more real and lips settings.

In Script mode the options are different, as here you can choose emotives (define the state of the character ? happy, fear, mad, sad, anger, surprise, etc.), set an audio background (a .wav file on your disk), record audio (record a message) or you can use the Text-to-Speech feature (write the text and use Microsoft's TTS - Text-To-Speech - engine).

The Timeline menu offers the same features as the Emotives one, plus Expression (here, you can choose, among others, from Voice Morphing, Facial Expression and Special Effects)

The Template section allows you to play with the templates of the software (you can have a lot of fun here and learn a lot about the software); the Custom section saves the custom models you create. Both sections are in the right of the application window.

The Edit bar with Model and Script features is practically the most important one of the application. Here you set the moving anchors for the image, apply emotives to the picture, set an audio background; practically it is inside these two modes where you test your creativity.

The Output bar has options that allow you to send the animated model to your colleagues as an executable file, create greeting cards, export the model into HTML format or to a multimedia format (save as .avi, .rm, wmv, . wav or .gif) and even send the image model to mobile phones.

Each of these exporting options include text editing (greeting cards), image and sound quality settings (messenger and web), resolution and frame rate (media), mobile device (3gpp, Nokia, SonyEricsson, Nec, etc.) output size, video and audio quality (mobile).

The Good

The software is great and has lots of exporting options. It is very well equipped in what concerns the motion settings. The range of emotives practically allows the user to define the model's character. The application permits the user to zoom in and out simply by pressing the NumLock+ key (very helpful in setting the anchors).

The Help menu takes you step by step through the options of the program and reveals every aspect of the features.

The Bad

The version I have tested is trial and does not have all the options activated and has limitations like: the media export gets applied a watermark, and the voice recording limit is 30 seconds. The user won't be able to save to CrazyTalk Script (.CTS), CrazyTalk Image (.CTM), and Face JPEG formats. If the saving options would have been unlocked the user could have known about the size of the saved files.

The Truth

It is not a very complex software, anyone can use it. Furthermore, the features are absolutely great.

You really must test this program, even if only for the 15 days trial and with all the limitations. You will have a great time making your friends look funny by applying the included emotives.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 5
pricing / value 4


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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