5 Best Tools to Animate Old Photos Online: Tell Your Precious Story Vividly

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5 Best Tools to Animate Old Photos Online: Tell Your Precious Story Vividly

Last Updated: 2025. 01. 13

When you flip through a photo album, it's an opportunity to retell the stories behind the images and revisit long-forgotten memories. Photos capture precious moments, preserving them for eternity. However, they have their limitations—unlike videos, they can’t immerse viewers in the experience. So, you may wonder, is there a way to bring those old photos to life? The answer is yes, with AI-powered photo-to-video animation tools. These tools use artificial intelligence to add motion and depth, transforming still images into captivating animated videos. In this article, we’ll introduce you to the 5 best online photo animators that can help you tell your cherished stories in a more vivid and engaging way. Let’s explore!

5 Best Tools to Animate Old Photos Online

#1 FlexClip Old Photo Animator #2 Virbo AI Old Photo Animator #3 MyHeritage Animate Old Family Photos #4 Reface Animate Old Photos with AI #5 HitPaw Animate Old Photos

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#1 FlexClip Old Photo Animator

Regret never having a picture that huge your passed by grandma? or wanted to relive childhood memories with a fresh twist? FlexClip’s Old Photo Animator is the perfect tool to bring family photos, cartoons, or any vintage image to life with ease. No matter how creative your ideas are, just type them into the prompt box, and FlexClip’s AI will animate your old photos into vivid videos, complete with realistic facial expressions and movements, making your pictures feel like they’re truly alive. Concerned the result might look unnatural? Don’t be! FlexClip excels at preserving the original look and character of the individuals in the photos, ensuring the animated video stays true to the source. Plus, FlexClip generates high-quality animations at impressive speed, so you can share your incredible video within minutes.

Animate Old Photos Online with FlexClip's Old Photos Animator

Want to take your animation to the next level? FlexClip offers an array of powerful tools to enhance your creation. With the TTS feature, you can convert text into a natural-sounding voiceover in 140+ languages and accents. The auto-subtitle tool generates captions in 60+ languages, with multiple subtitle styles for better clarity. Additionally, FlexClip offers a vast library of royalty-free soundtracks, filters, effects, and overlays to give your animated video a unique and professional finish. With FlexClip, the possibilities are endless!

Animate Old Photos Now

Key Features of FlexClip

Animate family photos, selfies, or AI-generated images into lively animations.

AI photo restorer, image upscaler, image style changer and more to unlock and streamline your photo creation with AI.

Transform photos into vivid animations based on your text instructions.

Super fast processing speed for smooth, natural animations.

A range of additional features to perfect and enhance your animated video

How to Animate Old Photos with FlexClip

Step 1

Go to FlexClip’s AI Video Generator and select the "Image to Video" option.

Step 2

Upload the image from your computer, or choose an existing one from your personal storage if you’ve already generated photos using FlexClip’s AI text-to-image or image-to-image tools.

Upload the Image You Want to Animate in FlexClip

Step 3

Enter your vision into the prompt box, and let FlexClip bring it to life. Choose your preferred animation style and duration. For best results with people, we recommend using the "Professional" mode.

Enter Your Text Prompt and Make Setting for Photo Animation

Step 4

Click "Generate" to begin. After a brief processing time, you can download the MP4 file or further personalize your video using FlexClip’s powerful editing tools.

Old Photos Animated by FlexClip

#2 Virbo AI Old Photo Animator

Welcome to Virbo AI, an old photo animator from Wondershare, where you can step into the enchanting world of photo animation and breathe life into your treasured memories. Powered by cutting-edge AI technology, Virbo AI transforms your static images into dynamic animations with smooth, lifelike movement—complete with synchronized audio. The tool brings facial expressions to life, ensuring that your photo animations feature realistic lip-syncing. You can further enhance your creation with auto-generated captions and nostalgic background music, adding emotional depth and charm to your animated video. If you’re looking to infuse your memories with vibrant movement, Virbo AI is definitely worth exploring.

Animate Old Photos Online with Virbo AI

Key Features of Virbo AI

Effortlessly convert still selfies into fluid, animated videos.

Create high-quality photo animations with lifelike lip-syncing movements.

Enhance your animation with auto-captions and emotional background music.

How to Animate Old Photos with Virbo AI

Step 1

Visit Wondershare Virbo AI and select the "AI Talking Photo" tab.

Visit Virbo AI and Select AI Talking Photo Feature

Step 2

Upload the photo you’d like to animate by clicking on “Upload Photo.” You also have the option to restyle the image for a fresh look.

Upload the Image You Want to Animate in Virbo AI

Step 3

Enter your text and choose a voiceover option. If you’re planning to share your animation on social media, you can also enable Subtitles and Background Music.

Choose a Voiceover Option and Make Setting

Step 4

Once you’re satisfied, click “Create Video” to animate your photo. After a brief processing time, download your completed animated video to your device.

#3 MyHeritage Animate Old Family Photos

Looking for a creative way to bring your family history to life? MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia is the perfect tool! This game-changing technology breathes new life into old photos, animating the faces of your loved ones with lifelike expressions and movements. It creates a vivid experience, making your treasured memories feel more real. The best part? The character and appearance of the original individuals are preserved, ensuring the animations stay true to the photo. While you can animate all the faces in your images, the current version of MyHeritage allows only one face animation to be downloaded at a time.

Animate Old Photos with MyHeritage

Key Features of MyHeritage

Experience astonishing facial animations driven by advanced deep learning technology from MyHeritage from D-ID.

Easily animate old family photos with AI and share short films effortlessly on social media.

Photo Enhancer will automatically enhance the old photo quality before photo animating to deliver realistic results.

Download the animated video in MP4 format with a branded watermark.

How to Animate Old Family Photos Using MyHeritage

Step 1

Open MyHeritage website and select Animate photos from the drop-down menu of Photos.

Visit MyHeritage and Select Animate Photos Option

Step 2

Click Upload Photo to choose a photo file or drag and drop to import your old family photo. MyHeritage will instantly identify the faces in the photo and animate them with characteristics preserved.

Import Your Family Photo to MyHeritage to Animate

Step 3

Once your animation video is ready, it will start playing immediately. If the image features more than one faces, select one from among the individual faces that have been detected in the image on the right side.

Select the Face You Want to Animate

Step 4

Click on Download icon to save the animation video to your computer in MP4 format. Or you can share the project to social media by tapping the Share tap or pasting the link.

#4 Reface Animate Old Photos with AI

Wondering how to animate old photos into a fun, sing-along and dancing animation video? Reface is the perfect platform to make your audience laugh out! With a variety of animation templates, from famous pop stars to festive themes and adorable pets, you can easily choose your favorite preset. Reface will then apply it to turn any ordinary photo into an engaging animation video in just seconds.

Worried the result might look unnatural? Not with Reface! Unlike simple face-swapping tools, Reface uses advanced algorithms to analyze key facial landmarks, like eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows, to understand the structure and movement of the subject’s face. This ensures a more realistic and dynamic transformation. Thanks to its intuitive interface, you can effortlessly turn old photos into animated videos, even with no prior experience.

Animate Old Photos Online With Reface

Key Features of Reface

Instantly turn ordinary photos into fun sing-along videos, breathing new life into static images.

A variety of animation templates allow you to quickly convert pictures into animated videos.

Enjoy fast processing speeds that deliver hilarious animated videos with control over which faces to animate.

How to Animate Old Photos Using Reface

Step 1

Visit the Reface website and click on "Upload Content" to add a clear image featuring faces you want to animate.

Step 2

Browse through the motion category to pick your preferred animation preset. Reface will automatically detect all faces in the photo and display them in the "Faces" area. Choose the face you want to animate, or click the "All" button to animate every face in the photo.

Select the Animation Preset You Like in Reface

Step 3

Press the "Animate" button to begin the process. Once complete, you can download the animated video to your device.

#5 HitPaw Animate Old Photos

Revive your old photos with HitPaw’s animate old photo features now! Whether you’re aiming to create an eyeball-catching TikTok video, prepare a creative gift for your loved one or simply just for fun, transforming your old photos into animated videos with HitPaw is the perfect way to do it. Powered by advanced AI technology, HitPaw effortlessly generates natural and engaging face animations from the photo you select. Unlike other tools that animate multiple faces at once, HitPaw focuses on animating one face per image to ensure high-quality results. Therefore, for the best outcome, be sure to use a clear picture and carefully select the portrait you want to animate.

Animate Old Photos Online with HitPaw

Key Features of HitPaw

Transform static photos into lively, animated images with vibrant movement.

Download your animated project as a GIF or video file for easy sharing and use.

Accurately analyze the selected portrait and create talking photos while keeping the rest of the image intact.

How to Animate Old Photos Using HitPaw

Step 1

Open HitPaw AI Face Animator and upload an image.

Step 2

Select the proper position with the portrait in the pop-up window and tap Confirm to save your changes.

Select the Portrait Selection of the Photo to Animate

Step 3

HitPaw will instantly upload your picture and start animating the selected face with AI.

Wait for HitPaw Animating the Photos

Step 4

Once the animated photo is ready, download it as an MP4 video or a GIF file for sharing.

Download the Animated Photo to Local

The Bottom Line

Thanks to AI-powered technology, turning old photos into lively animations and reviving memories has never been easier. In this article, we've compiled a list of the 5 best photo animation tools that can help you breathe new life into your pictures, whether for entertainment, creative projects, talking-head videos, or more. What’s your goal for animating your old photos? Now it’s your turn to browse through our list, choose the right tool, and start transforming your projects today!

Bella /

Full of vitality, curiosity and hope, Bella is an energetic copywriter at FlexClip. She mainly concentrates on video creation and troublesome issues related to video editing, providing users with practical solutions and tricks. Personally, Bella loves novels, sci-fi movies, cooking and travel. And, she believes that all her life is the best arrangement from God.