Continuing my personal obsession with software cameras (see recent ravings about CameraBag for the iPhone), today’s work time has been largely spent faffing about with Poladroid, a free desktop app that turns photos into Polaroids. It’s fantastic.
I’ve spent hours going back through the last year’s worth of photography in iPhoto, picking out duds and didn’t-quite-works and throwing them at Poladroid. It makes a lot of photographic failures into new shining stars.
And the way it works is clever too. It mimics a Polaroid camera in every way, complete with a loud ker-zjeerrrrr-chikk sound as the photo pops out, and with the photos themselves having to “dry” as the initial brown chemical wash fades out, leaving the image proper behind. Completed photos get spat out over your desktop, as if they’ve fallen there. This is digital photography with the personality of a film camera.
And it’s software with a sense of humor. Love it.
16 responses to “Poladroid Is Best Thing Ever”
Cute toy, fun name. Thanx for sharing this, I gonna check it out! I was using a nifty Polaroid filter in Filter Forge recently, and this looks like it makes the process of ‘roid-zation even nicer.
Alas there’s no Windows version yet (I use both platforms).
love this program…tried it and love it…great pics come out of it…and the wonder as to how they will come out…and you can save versions of the pic as it develops…kool
even comes with finger prints in various places on the final photo and if you use a program like preview or skitch to take a screen shot and you can add writing to the bottom of the photo like we did back in the day…you can change the typeset so it can even look like a sharpie marker
this is a must have for those of us from the old days to remember what it was like to get instant gratification from pics…that is taken for granted by these days people
LOVE IT…LOVE IT
These guys are trying to save the real thing.
savepolaroid.com
it’s beautiful i can use in every keynote thanks for this post
While Polaroid had its uses (Polapan mostly, for “proper” instant images at a way more insane price per shot than the usual Polaroid), I’m glad it’s gone.
Just do the math. Polaroid just cost an arm and a leg. It died within a year if it was left exposed to light, the Polaroid cameras sucked, etc.
You’re just ooing and aahing at old crap just because it’s old. But the current crap is actually *way* better. The same way digital photography is *way* better than using rolls of plastic smeared with noxious chemicals. I’ve taken pictures all my life (granted I’m now just over 40), I’ve been a professional in film and TV, using chgemical film and analog video. My stuff has been all over the TV. I can’t begin to yell you how much analog sucks in photography compared to digital. Don’t fall in that trap.
Do you really want some lab to do all your post processing for you with no way you can control what they do unless you pay insane prices ? Do you really want to change films each time the light changes ? That’s what chemical photo was like.
People have such short memories.
Yes Polaroid was “instant”. But it was as bad as your random phone camera. Except you’ll still have your phone camera images in 10 years.
Your Polaroids will have changed quite a lot by then.
I LOVE IT! It is so much fun. It takes me back to my first polaroid longer ago than I care to admit. I wish I had saved it. It’s wonderful to see my digital work on this software.
I was dubious at first but after sifting through iPhoto for stuff that never made the cut, i have now officially drunk the kool-aid. I love it!
There is now a flickr group specifically for Poladroid pix:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/p…
here is my first attempt:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7…
Hey, very nice site. I came across this on Google, and I am stoked that I did. I will definitely be coming back here more often. Wish I could add to the conversation and bring a bit more to the table, but am just taking in as much info as I can at the moment.
Thank You
Trade4target