Lenticular Prints (GIF Prints): How They Work and What to Print on Them

Created by: PrintForFun. Reviewed and updated by the KT Colour team, October 2026.

The short answer: a lenticular print, sometimes sold as a GIF print, is two or more photos sliced into thin strips, interlaced, and printed behind a clear ribbed plastic lens. Each ridge of the lens shows a different strip depending on the angle, so the picture changes as you tilt it. It is the printed equivalent of a two-frame GIF or a Boomerang. The photos that work best are two clearly different shots of the same subject with a similar background.

How a lenticular print is made

Software takes your images and cuts each one into very fine strips, then lays the strips side by side in sequence: strip one from photo A, strip one from photo B, strip two from photo A, and so on. This step is called interlacing. The interlaced image is printed at a resolution matched exactly to the lens, then bonded to the flat back of a lenticular sheet, which is clear plastic moulded with rows of tiny cylindrical ridges called lenticules.

Each ridge acts as a magnifier for the strips directly beneath it. Look from one angle and every ridge shows you a strip from photo A; tilt the print and they all show photo B. The printed strips and the ridges have to line up exactly across the whole sheet. If they drift by even a fraction of a ridge, bands appear across the picture, which is why a lenticular print is made by a specialist lab and not on a home printer.

Lens pitch: what LPI means

Lenticular sheets are described by their pitch in lenses per inch, written LPI. The pitch decides how thick the sheet is, how far away it should be viewed, and how many frames it can hold.

A coarse lens is thicker and gives stronger depth for 3D, but you can see the ridges up close. A fine lens looks smooth in the hand but leaves fewer printed dots under each ridge, so it holds fewer frames. A small photo print uses a fine lens, which is why it works best with two or three images and not ten.

The effects a lens can produce

• Flip. Two or three complete images that swap as you tilt. This is the classic photo use, and the most forgiving to make.
• Animation. A short run of frames from a video or burst, so the subject appears to move.
• Zoom and morph. A series of frames in which the subject grows, shrinks, or blends from one thing into another.
• 3D. Several views of the same scene from slightly different positions. Each eye sees a different view through the lens, and the brain reads the difference as depth.

The direction of the ridges matters. For flip and animation the ridges usually run horizontally and you tilt the print up and down, so both eyes see the same image at the same time and the change is clean. For 3D the ridges must run vertically, because the effect depends on your left and right eyes seeing different strips.

Which photos work

• Two clearly different shots of the same subject. A different pose or expression gives a flip you can see at once.
• Before and after. A baby photo and a graduation photo of the same person, a renovation, a ten-year challenge. This is the most popular use for gifts.
• Two moments from a burst. Eyes closed then open, a jump, a wave. Two frames a second apart give the effect of movement.
• A caption frame. Use the second image for the same photo with a date or a message added, so the words appear as you tilt.

Crop so the subject fills the frame. The lens softens fine detail a little, so faces that are small in the picture lose definition, and small text becomes hard to read. Keep any wording large and bold. A 12 megapixel phone photo has more than enough resolution for the small sizes these prints are usually made in.

Ghosting, and how to avoid it

Ghosting is a faint trace of one image showing through the other. Every lenticular print has a little, and the choice of photos decides how much you notice.

• Keep the backgrounds similar. A white shirt in one photo over a black wall in the other is the worst case, because the bright area shows through the dark one. Two photos taken in the same place and light ghost the least.
• Use fewer frames. Two images separate more cleanly than three, and three more cleanly than six.
• Avoid thin lines and small text that sit in a different place in each frame.
• View it under one light. A single lamp or a window gives a clean flip. Several lights from different directions show both images at once.

Turning a Boomerang or video into frames

1. Save the Boomerang or short clip to your phone.
2. Open ezgif.com and use Video to GIF. Set the frame rate to about 5 frames per second so you have fewer, more distinct frames to pick from.
3. Click Split to break the GIF into still images, then download the frames.
4. Pick two or three frames with the biggest difference between them.

Looking after a lenticular print

The lens is plastic, so it scratches more easily than glass. Wipe it with a soft dry cloth, along the ridges and not across them. Keep it out of a hot car and away from direct sun, because heat can warp the sheet and loosen the bond between the lens and the print, and a warped lens no longer lines up with the strips beneath it. It does not need glass in front of it, and glass adds reflections that weaken the effect.

Common questions

Is a lenticular print the same as a hologram? No. A hologram records light with a laser and is a different technology. A lenticular print is an ordinary colour print behind a moulded lens.

How many photos can one print hold? Two or three for a clean flip on a small print. Animation and 3D prints use more frames, but each added frame makes every image a little softer.

Can I make one at home? You can buy lenticular sheets and interlacing software, but lining the print up with the lens by hand is difficult. Most people get better results from a lab that makes them.

Does KT Colour make lenticular prints? No. This page is a guide to how they work.