Lign press kit

Lign aligns a series of a person’s own photos on one or more points, then plays them as a flipbook or morph video. It uses real alignment, not generative AI.

School years, pregnancy, a fitness or grow-in journey, a puppy, beard/hair growth, scar healing, braces: gradual change becomes visible.

Vision finds faces, bodies, pets and tapped objects on device; Metal morphs. App Intents lets Siri, Apple Intelligence and Shortcuts create projects and add photos. Spotlight finds photos; Share Extension imports them. A Live Activity tracks export. Liquid Glass shapes it.

On iPhone Duo, The Spread shows the first photo and flipbook on facing pages; Hinge Morph moves through photos as the hinge opens or closes. The Stage plays the flipbook above controls when half folded. Contact Sheet draws a line through chosen points, and Loupe Page shows a 4x loupe for manual points.

Photos never leave the phone; no account. Accessibility throughout. Launches on iPhone, iPhone Duo and iPad in 11 languages.

After a wedding, someone shared a fast-cut video of the guests in a group chat. The cuts followed the music, but I couldn't recognize people quickly enough. If their eyes had lined up, every face would have stayed visible.

The first version nearly worked, but it was messy. I deleted it and began again with a clean foundation.

The first algorithm rotated photos until the eyes matched. Tilted heads left black corners, so I built different alignment modes. I also kept revising the wording, because people should be able to choose without having to understand the transformation behind it.

Once the pupils worked, I kept finding more points worth using: brows, nose, mouth, chin, forehead, then shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. That meant supporting one- and two-point alignment, so people could choose what mattered in their photos.

Then the use cases widened. I added objects for the match-cut videos where a watch or logo stays centered between shots, and animals for a puppy growing up. When detection failed, manual alignment made room for whatever else someone wanted to line up: one point, two points, or an area.

A test photo also caught a face in the background. Lign chose it first, so I built a picker and duplicated photos with multiple people, letting each person appear in the final result.

I added video export when I realized not everyone wanted to move aligned photos into an editor. I also wanted Lign to fit the phone's everyday flow, especially the share extension I use all the time. The loading animation takes a cue from Apple Intelligence, so the work happening on device feels visible.