Synthesizing parallax in a still photograph requires you to separate foreground, middle ground and background elements into layers. In almost all cases the best tool for that is Photoshop. The layers are then stacked in 3D space and a camera move is added. This is a time consuming process and depending on the photograph and the move you want to make it can take many hours per image. There is no plug-in that will automate that process.
Many photographs require that you reconstruct the background so you can make a camera move, most require at least scaling the middle ground and foreground elements so that you have a little room to move the camera. Without a lot of preparation of the images in Photoshop your camera moves will be limited to short dolly (move in) and even shorter truck (left and right) moves.
When you set up your 3D space in After Effects you position the layers in approximately the same relative position they would be in the real world. For example if the original photograph was shot with a normal lens (50mm) and the foreground element, a person, was about 5 feet from the camera, and behind them was a window that was 10 feet from the camera, and behind the window was a tree that was 100 feet from the camera and behind the tree were some mountains and the horizon you could separate the image into 4 layers. The person in front, the window behind that, the tree behind that, and then the horizon. When you make all of the layers 3D and add a camera the camera will be positioned approximately where the kitchen wall would be (the middle ground of the image) so you would need to move the person closer to the camera by about 1/3 of the distance, then scale the person down so the person was approximately the same size as it was in the original photograph. Then you would move the layer with the tree about twice the distance from the camera. For example, if the camera was at -2600 in z, the position for the tree layer would be about 2600 in z. Then that layer would be scaled up. The last step would be to move the horizon. You can't stick it at infinity but usually about 4X the Z value of the camera is sufficient. Many times you can get away with having that layer closer. Sometimes you want to have the layer farther away. It all depends on how realistic you want the parallax change to be.
There is an easy way to set the scale of the layers you move in z space so the image looks exactly like the original image before you start the camera move by using an expression that measures the length (distance) between the camera and the layer and does a little multiplication. Then you make note of the scale value, turn off the expression and enter the value or convert the expression to keyframes then delete the keyframes. Now you are set up for the camera move. If you have not filled in the holes in the background you are limited to a straight dolly in. If you cheat the scale of the closer layers you can add in a little truck to the left or right. The expression looks like this:
C = thisComp.activeCamera;
CP = fromWorld(C.toWorld([0,0,0]));
L = thisLayer
LP = fromWorld(L.toWorld(anchorPoint));
d = length(CP, LP);
z = C.zoom;
r = d/z
r * value
I have it saved as an animation preset and I use it all the time. Here it is if you want it: Dropbox - Fill camera frame.ffx
That's how it is done.
There's another technique that is a little more difficult and it involves placing solid layers for the foreground, middle ground and background layers, then adding a light at the starting camera position, then setting the original photograph in front of the light and setting the light transmission in the material properties to 100% and cast shadows only in the material options. The masked layers are then set to accept shadows and receive lights is turned off. This technique has some advantages and some disadvantages, can be done entirely in After Effects, and if you set the rendering engine to the Ray-traced renderer, produces some amazing results with a little less work on some images. The disadvantage is that you cannot fill holes in the background to allow trucking moves.
I hope this helps. 100 pictures, full blown 2.5D production with background holes repaired probably equals about two to three months of production time for an enthusiast or about two weeks of full time work by a professional.
One other suggestion. Make each camera move a separate composition and do your editing in Premiere Pro. Trying to fly a camera through 10 or 20 photos in a single composition is going to get really complicated and incredibly messy very quickly. 100 photos would be nuts.
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