How to create a shredded photo in Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects?

Question

I need to create an effect that would tear the photo into small pieces. These pieces should then fly in all directions. How can I do this as effectively as possible in Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe After Effects?

I tried to manually divide the photo into many layers in Adobe Photoshop. Then save the individual layers as separate files. Then, in Premiere Pro, put them together to create a complete photo and make a each piece of photo to fly away to different direction.

It's very time consuming... Is there a better way to do this?

Thank you for your advice!

Answer 1

I would do this physically. Print the images out, tear them up, scan the teared sections. Then introduce the teared sections using key-framed masks with the original sections. I can't think of a way of doing this that wouldn't be time-consuming...

Answer 2

Not sure if this is the best way of doing it but a good starting point could be with shatter to control the physics and the roughen edges to give it a torn look. That doesn't give you the white edges you'd typically have but maybe keeping the same precomp below with a slight stagger and a white/off-white fill could do the trick? But yeah, best to do this the 'hard way'.