A week back I needed to convert a photo to a polaroid (digitally) to be used in a web site design. This was quickly done using our trusted Photoshop program. The client liked the “polaroid effect” so much that they asked us to do it for tens of other photographs.
Now, we are quite adept at Photoshop so this was not a problem because the native image was in its own layer. We simply needed to substitute one photo with another.
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However, this set me thinking. I’m sure there would be many people who would love to convert a photo to a digital polaroid and there would be many services on the web through which one can accomplish this. A quick search on Google proved that I was correct. Here are several resources and programs I found online which will convert photographs to polaroids.
Convert photo to polaroid online
Rollip helps you create polaroids from your own photos. You can download these for use on web sites or print them out. You are even provided a URL that you can copy/paste into an email, messenger or a web page – the image is saved on the Rollip web server ready to be shared!
The web based interface offers different text and polaroid effects and produces nice looking images. However, I would have liked everything to be on one page instead of loading a new page for each step. All-in-all a great service. Check out the two images (resized to fit on this page) I created with Rollip.
Instantizer does not offer as many different options as Rollip – it has only one but the service is really simple to use. Just upload a photo, add a description (brief), enter an angle for rotation and have the photo converted to a polaroid. You can save the image or use the resultant URL (note, this lasts only for 24 hours). Below are two images I converted and they have been resized (50% of their original size).
Programs that will convert digital photographs to polaroids
In addition to web-based services that will convert digital photographs to polaroids, there are standalone downloadable free programs. These may prove helpful if you have tons of photos to be converted.
Pola, which calls itself the original Polaroid-like image maker, is a free downloadable program and features drag-n-drop functionality. It is available for different operating systems – Windows, Mac and Linux.
Poladroid which is in Beta at the time of writing is a small program that you can download to convert your images to polaroids. It’s 100% free but donations help. Supports drag-n-drop and high resolution photos.
