onOne Software Blog

My Take on Polaroid in the Digital Age

December 8, 2008 by Mike Wong • 1 Comment

This month's issue of PC Photo magazine has a nice article by Mark Edward Harris on learning how to keep the creative look of Polaroid film alive in the digital darkroom. You can read the article online here.

While the article (and the images by photographer Sachi Kato) are very nice, it assumes that you, as the photographer, have a library of old Polaroid film edges at your disposal to recreate this look.

If you don't have a these for whatever reason, there's another way that you can do this in a very quick and easy way.

The method descibed in PC Photo article mentions that Sachi Kato has taken old Polaroid film edges and digitized them for future use (presumably in Photoshop). If you don't have old Polaroid film edges yourself or if you don't have a scanner or maybe you just don't have the time, you do have options if you want to get this look for your photos.

Option 1 - Purchase Edges Online

There are lots of Microstock websites like iStockphoto.com and Fotolia.com (are the ones that I typically go to first) that are a great resource for finding polaroid edges that you can purchase for your own use. Once you purchase a polaroid edge from a Microstock site, you can then bring that file into Photoshop.

From within Photoshop, you will need to create a mask that knocks out the middle of the frame so your photo can show through. Depending on the edge, you may have additional masking work to do as not all Polaroid style film has a clean and easy edge. In fact, I think it's those edges that are a little more complex that are more compelling to add to your photos. But by all means, take a look online and see what you can find.

One word of caution before you go and buy a bunch of these types of frames online and start using them. Please, please, please read the license agreement before you buy an image like this online. Especially if you plan on selling any of your work using an image like this purchased online. Some licenses may allow you to resell and others may not so be sure to read the fine print. Afterall, you wouldn't want someone to use your work for more than what they paid for right?

Option 2 - Use PhotoFrame 4

PhotoFrame 4 and PhotoFrame 4 Professional Edition both come with hundreds and hundreds of frames that you can use (without restrictions like some Microstock frames). Among the other benefits of using a product like PhotoFrame 4 is that the work to create the masks or holes for your photo to show through has already been done for you.

PhotoFrame also gives you a couple of other benefits aside from already creating the frames or edges for you. As a plug-in to Photoshop, PhotoFrame is full featured program that gives you the ability to dynamically adjust the size of your original, underlying image layer so you can position and resize it as necessary to get it to fit under the image properly. You can also adjust the blending mode and opacity of the frame edge as well as the color of the edge's background so it blends in seamlessly with whatever color background the image may be presented on (think of floating your images on your website).

Also PhotoFrame 4 isn't just about frames. It also comes with a wide selection of texture overlays. One thing that was mentioned in the PC Photo article is how Sachi Kato will desaturate the photo to help get a true Polaroid look as well as overlay a photograph of fog over the image to help simulate film grain. Depending on the texture overlay you add, you can change the blend mode, reduce the opacity, increase the blur and increase the noise to desaturate and add noise all in one step. It really doesn't get any easier than that!

Here are a few examples of the kinds of polaroid and other film edges that are included in PhotoFrame 4. Keep in mind this is just an sampling. Many of these edges have multiple variations.