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.
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
