A birthday dinner becomes a royal court, with Grandma on the throne. Two friends over coffee turn into a Van Gogh painting, and then the painting starts to move. The dog in the back garden is suddenly dressed for space. A family photo taken on the front step ends up as a stroll through a city of the future.
A Momento is a cinematic digital keepsake made personal through your photograph. You choose a ready-made MagicLens experience, add a photo and follow its guided choices to make a finished image or short film, depending on the experience.
One photo can travel a long way: back through history or forward into the future, into a painter's studio, through a holiday or a milestone, or into a transformation nobody saw coming. Your people stay at the centre of the story. The world around them is free to change.
Why we call it a Momento
A memento is something you keep to remember a moment. Your photo is a visual representation of that moment. And a Momento is a realistic, cinematic experience that MagicLens creates from your photograph. Made for any occasion, anyone you love, any era, and any style.
The symbol carries the same idea. The MagicLens mark is a lens: the part that looks closely at your picture. In the Momentos mark, the lens's outer ring becomes a frame, ready for the moment you put inside it.
Start with your favourite photo
Every Momento begins with a picture you already love. Then it asks a simple question: who is in it, and where could they go next?
Your family
Big family photos are hard to take and easy to treasure. In Time Machine, this one keeps every face, from the grandparents to the baby in the high chair, and moves the whole party into a medieval court. Grandma takes the throne. The baby gets a crown too.
Your friends
Masterpiece turns a photo into a painting in the style of a famous artist. These two friends keep their laughter, the mug and the red hair; the brushstrokes, the colour and the sky belong to Van Gogh. Add movement, and the painting comes alive.
Your pets
Pets rarely pose on command, which makes a good pet photo worth keeping. We are building Momentos for them too: costumes from astronaut to wizard, a new haircut or the wild animal your cat believes it is.
Just you
A single portrait is enough. Make-up FX dresses the person in your photo for the part, here as a vampire in a high-collared cape, without a trip to the costume shop or an hour of make-up.
The two of you, somewhere else
Time Machine travels across places as well as centuries. Here it kept the couple recognisably themselves: their faces, his wheelchair and how close they sit. The clothes, the setting and the light belong to another time.
Into the future, and into motion
Some Momentos are portraits. Some are films. And a portrait can become the opening frame of a film, as it does in our Time Machine walking-tour prototype, when the same family sets off through the city they have just arrived in.
Momentos also celebrate the occasions you would photograph anyway. The Halloween collection shows what a holiday can become. A lost tooth can bring a night-time visit from the Tooth Fairy.
A closer look: Masterpiece
Masterpiece shows how much a single photo can hold. Choose a painter's style, and the same family portrait becomes a Renaissance panel, a Monet garden, a Klimt in gold leaf, a woodblock print with a great wave behind them or a Mucha poster.
Each style is researched before you ever see it: the palette, the brushwork, the light and the surface of the paint. You make one choice, the style, and Masterpiece does the rest.
Guided choices, never a prompt
One photo in, a finished keepsake out. You do not need to describe a scene or learn how to direct an image model. The scene, the research and the production steps are already built into each experience.
What you choose depends on the Momento. Time Machine asks for an era. Masterpiece asks for a painter. Each experience offers the choices that matter for its result, and leaves the rest to us.
Where Momentos fit in MagicLens
A Momento is one of three ways into MagicLens.
Make starts with a ready-made Momento. Choose the experience and personalise it with your photo.
Create is the MagicLens Studio path, where guided creative tools help you develop characters, storyboards, images and films.
Build is Studio Pro, where creators connect production steps into repeatable workflows.
A few useful questions
Is a Momento a photo or a video?
It can be either. Time Machine and Masterpiece start with a portrait, and animation can bring that portrait to life. Other Momentos, such as a transformation, are films from the start.
Will every experience work with my photo?
Check the experience's sample and any photo guidance. Some are built around a group; others centre on one person, a pet or a scene with room for something to happen. Our Visual Intelligence article shows how a photo is read before an effect is planned.
Do I need to know prompt engineering?
No. The ready-made Momento path uses guided choices. The production work is already shaped into the experience, so you can focus on the photo and the result you want.
Where should I start?
Pick a favourite photo, then browse the Momentos collection and choose the idea that makes you want to see it become something new.