Interactive image tools compared: hotspots, 360° spins and 2.5D depth (2026)

Ask for an interactive image and you can get three unrelated things: a picture with clickable pins, a product you spin all the way round, or one photo with depth you can drag. Search for “make a photo interactive” and the answers are hotspot tools; search for “interactive product photos” and they are 360° and 3D-model vendors. Both are right for somebody. This page sorts the kinds first, then compares the interactive image tools in each, as their own pages described them on 25 September 2026. We make Gifsy, which is in the 2.5D group, so there's a section on where it's the wrong pick.

The short answer

Choose a hotspot tool (Interactive Image, Genially, ThingLink or H5P) when the picture needs clickable pins that explain things. Choose a 360° spin (Sirv) when shoppers need every side and you can shoot 24 to 72 photos. Choose 2.5D depth (Gifsy) when you have one photo and want it to move. Choose a 3D model for a full turn or AR. Choose a splat world generator (World Labs Marble, Spline Spell) when you want to move around inside a scene made from one image.

Most people who search for an interactive image want the first kind and have never heard of the others. Most people who want an interactive product photo need the second or the fourth, and then balk at the photo shoot or the modelling bill. The third kind sits in the gap between them. It's the one we build.

Three kinds of interactive image (and two more things)

Hotspots: clickable pins on a flat picture

Picture a floor plan. You tap the kitchen and a box opens with the appliance list and a photo. That's a hotspot image: an ordinary flat picture with markers on top, each opening text, an image, a video or a link. The picture itself never moves. This is what education, training and marketing teams mean by an interactive image, and it's why “make a photo interactive” usually turns up ThingLink, Genially and Interactive Image. For explaining the parts of something, nothing else on this page comes close.

360° spins: many photos, played as you drag

A spin is a flipbook. The product sits on a turntable, a fixed camera shoots it every few degrees, and the viewer swaps frames as the visitor drags, so the product seems to turn. Sirv says photographers most commonly shoot 24, 36 or 72 images per spin. Nothing is estimated. Every side you see was photographed, which is exactly why shoppers trust spins and exactly why each product costs a studio session.

2.5D depth: one photo that moves in 3D

Here an AI model estimates how far away every pixel is, and the photo is drawn as a surface pushed into that depth. Drag it, or move the pointer over it, and near things shift more than far things: real parallax from one ordinary JPG. The catch is in the name. One photo only contains one side of anything, so the camera can only swing a little before it runs out of picture.

In Gifsy that limit is about ±20° sideways and ±13° up and down. It used to be 23°. We pulled it back because edges next to the subject stretched visibly at the extremes, and the stretch grows with the angle, so giving up three degrees bought cleaner edges everywhere. (If you want the whole pipeline, models and all, it's in how 3D photos work.)

And the fourth thing: a 3D model

A 3D model is a mesh, usually a GLB or USDZ file, with geometry all the way round. It turns a full 360°, and on phones it can be placed in the room with AR. Shopify accepts GLB and USDZ files as product media and shows them in its Online Store 2.0 and Horizon themes; its guidance for partners who build models asks for about 4 MB per file. You get a model by modelling, scanning or generating it with AI. When the AI starts from a single photo, the sides the camera never saw are invented, so check them before a shopper does.

And a fifth: explorable worlds (Gaussian splats)

Ask an AI assistant for a tool that turns a photo into an “interactive 3D scene” and this is often what comes back. A world model takes one image and builds a whole scene around it, stored as a Gaussian splat: millions of small, soft, coloured blobs that a viewer can draw from anywhere. You don't tilt the photo. You walk into it, look behind things, turn round.

Everything the photo didn't show is made up by the model, which is fine for a game level or a VR scene and a problem for a product page, where the back of the shoe has to be the real back of the shoe. The tools are younger, too: Spline calls Spell “highly experimental”, Timeless Mind is an alpha, and Marble's free plan is four worlds. A 2.5D photo sits at the other end: it keeps your picture, invents only the strip of background behind the subject, and stops at about ±20°.

The kinds side by side

A tick is good for you, a cross costs you something. Scroll sideways on a phone.

The tools, grouped by kind

Fifteen tools, each described from its own pages on 25 September 2026 (the explorable-world rows on 26 September 2026). The prose under the table has the detail and the catches.

Hotspot tools

Interactive Image is the simplest of the lot: pins on a photo or on a geographic map, delivered as one iframe you paste into Wix, Webflow, WordPress or anything that takes HTML. Free is one map with limited hotspots and a “Made with Interactive Image” badge. Pro is $5 a month for up to 500 maps, unlimited hotspots and no badge.

Interactive-Img has a similar name and the same idea, with a different delivery: a script embed its homepage puts at 7 KB gzipped. Free covers five images with no view limit. Premium, also $5 a month, raises that to 500 images with up to 200 points each and lets you remove its branding. It names Shopify, WordPress and Wix as places the code works without a plugin.

Genially is a presentation and learning tool that happens to make very good interactive images: pins that open pop-ups, labels, audio and close-ups. It calls itself a free interactive image maker, and it is, with two conditions from its own help centre: free creations carry a Genially watermark and are always public. Removing the watermark needs a premium plan with its Brand Kit. The plans page we were shown started at €6 a month billed yearly.

ThingLink is the heavyweight. It puts hotspots on images, video, 360° media and 3D models, and its tagline, “Digital Learning for the Real World”, tells you who it's for. The business pricing page lists no free-forever plan, a 14-day trial with no card, and an entry creator plan that includes 250 views a month. Too much for one product photo. Right for a virtual tour a trainer builds once and a hundred learners walk through.

H5P Image Hotspots is free, open-source software, and the pick if you already run WordPress, Moodle or Drupal: install the H5P plugin and host the content yourself. H5P is blunt that it offers “only free software”, not free hosting; H5P.com is the paid hosted version.

360° spin tools

Sirv is an image CDN with a spin viewer built in, and the free plan includes spins, with 500 MB of storage and 2 GB of bandwidth a month. Business starts at $19 a month. You embed a spin with its script and one div, it can put hotspots on a spin, and it documents a Shopify setup. Its own sizing note shows the weight of the format: 1 GB holds about 14 spins of 36 images at 2,500 px wide. The paid plans can also turn a video of a turning product into a spin, which helps if you shot a clip rather than stills.

Cloudimage 360 View is an MIT-licensed JavaScript viewer from Scaleflex. Point it at your own folder of frames; the Cloudimage CDN is optional. It does hotspot markers and pinch-to-zoom. Free, if you're happy pasting a script and hosting three dozen images per product.

2.5D depth tools

Gifsy is ours. You upload one photo at the 3D photo maker, depth and the subject cut-out are worked out in your browser, and you publish the scene and paste an iframe. Visitors drag to orbit, or, depending on the preset you pick, the scene follows the pointer, drifts on its own or moves with page scroll. The frame loads a WebP of your photo (typically 150 to 350 KB), a small depth map and the viewer script, and the copied snippet lazy-loads it; the embed guide lists every request.

3D photos are free and unlimited with an account, commercial use included, and embeds carry a small “Made with Gifsy” badge until you buy any 3D model credit pack (from $9), which removes it from all your embeds. The depth model runs entirely on your device. One server step, stated plainly: when you publish, filling in the background behind the subject runs on our server once and keeps nothing. The published scene is unlisted and kept out of search.

Depthy is the original open-source depth viewer. It's free, runs on your machine, is interactive in its own tab and exports a GIF. There's no hosting and no embed, and it hasn't been maintained in years. Immersity AI uses the same depth idea but exports video (MP4 or GIF), so on a web page it plays and nobody drags it; the Immersity AI alternatives page has the detail.

3D model tools

If you already have a GLB, a Shopify store doesn't need an app. Upload it as product media (up to 500 MB, optimised automatically past 15 MB) and Shopify's own themes let customers view it from any angle. Meshy generates a mesh from one image or a text prompt: 100 free credits a month, free outputs licensed CC BY 4.0 (commercial use with attribution), downloads as GLB, USDZ, OBJ, FBX, STL or .blend. Rivollo aims at shops specifically: its homepage says one product photo is enough to start, a few angles improve the model, and every model comes with a share link and an embed. It has a free plan; we couldn't find paid prices.

Explorable world tools

World Labs Marble builds a world from one image, text or a 360° panorama. The free plan gives four worlds; exporting splats and meshes starts on the paid plans, and commercial rights come with Pro. Spline Spell turns one image into a splat world and gives you a public link to embed it, with orbit, pan, zoom and auto-rotate settings; it's a separate early-access subscription that Spline says is priced high on purpose during this phase. Timeless Mind makes a splat from one photo with Apple's SHARP model and hands you a link to orbit and zoom: free, alpha, no sign-up, and no mention of embedding. If you can film the real thing from every side, Luma 3D Capture (a free iPhone app) builds an Interactive Scene from the video instead of guessing, and you can embed it on a website.

Product photos: which kind of interactive image?

This is where the question usually comes from, and where the answer costs real money. Four questions settle it.

1. Does the shopper need to see the back? Shoes, bags, chairs, anything with a sole, a strap or an inside: yes. Then it's a 360° spin or a 3D model, and 2.5D will disappoint you, because 20° won't show a heel. A spin is the faithful option. A generated model is the cheap one, and it needs checking.
2. Do you have one good photo per product and no studio? Most small shops do. A spin means reshooting every product on a turntable. 2.5D works from the photo you already have, which is how motion gets onto a catalogue this week instead of next quarter.
3. Is the job to explain features? A jacket with a waterproof zip, a recycled sole and a hidden pocket is a hotspot image. Short labels on pins beat any amount of motion for that.
4. Where will it sit on the page? Shopify's product gallery takes images, uploaded video (MP4, MOV or WebM), YouTube and Vimeo links, and GLB or USDZ models. It won't take an iframe. So a 3D model goes in the gallery, and a spin or a 2.5D scene goes in a section of the product page. One workaround for the gallery: export a WebM loop of the 2.5D scene and upload it as a product video. It moves, though nobody can drag it.

Material matters too. Glass, chrome and clear bottles are the weak spot for 2.5D, because the depth model reads the reflection rather than the surface. Matte boxes, shoes, bags and opaque bottles work well; the best photos for a 3D effect guide has the full list. The longer version of this section is our guide to interactive product photos without a 3D model, and if you're on Shopify, the step-by-step is adding a 3D product photo to Shopify.

You can also mix them. One product page can carry a 3D model in the gallery, a hotspot image in a “what's inside” section and a 2.5D scene as the lifestyle shot. Each answers a different question a shopper has.

Where Gifsy is the wrong pick

A comparison written by one of the contestants should say where it loses. So:

• The shopper has to see the back, the sole or the inside. A Gifsy scene turns about ±20° and stops.
• You need pins, tooltips or links on the image. Gifsy has none. Use a hotspot tool.
• You need a full turn or AR. That's a 3D model; on Shopify, upload a GLB.
• You want to walk around inside the scene or look behind the camera. That's a splat world generator such as Marble or Spline Spell.
• The product is glass, chrome or clear plastic. Reflections confuse the depth.
• It has to play where an iframe can't, like email or a social post. Export a GIF or WebM from the scene, or use a video tool.
• The image can't carry any branding and you don't want to pay anything. Free Gifsy embeds show a small badge; buying any credit pack (from $9) removes it.

If none of those apply, 2.5D is the quickest way to make a photo you already have behave like an object on the page.

FAQ

How this was compared

Every fact about another tool comes from its own pages (homepage, pricing, help centre or docs), read on 25 September 2026. We didn't build the same interactive image in each tool; that's a hands-on test we haven't done, which is why this page says compared rather than tested. Depthy's row repeats our 17 September 2026 check for the 3D photo makers comparison. Rivollo's site timed out when we tried to read it directly, so its row uses its homepage text as a search engine showed it. Genially showed us prices in euros, and yours may differ. Gifsy's numbers (the orbit limits, the plan limits, the embed's file list) come from its own source code. The explorable-world tools were read on 26 September 2026; Marble's pricing page draws its prices with a script we couldn't read, so the $20 is from its search listing, and its billing docs confirm the four free worlds and commercial rights on Pro.

Update log

• 12 October 2026: badge can now be removed with any credit pack.
• 12 October 2026: Gifsy's 3D photos became free and unlimited with an account; its row and section were updated.
• 26 September 2026: added explorable splat worlds (Marble, Spline Spell, Timeless Mind in the table; Luma 3D Capture in the text) and a Gaussian splat FAQ.
• 25 September 2026: first published. Twelve tools across hotspots, 360° spins, 2.5D depth and 3D models.

Make a 2.5D photo from one image, see Gifsy pricing, or read 3D photos for websites for where the draggable kind works best.