The End Of “Polaroid” Photography!

Do you remember those blocky cameras which so many people used in the 70′s and 80′s of last century? Just after you moved the big shutter button the machine started to make a rattling noise and slowly rolled out an empty paper which mysteriously changed into a photo after 2 minutes.

Those instant photos – better known as Polaroids and easy to spot by their greenish look and the large frame at the bottom – never reached a really good quality but i remember that it always was big fun to make some spontaneous shots and stare at the fresh positive, waiting for the first contours to appear.

Now Polaroid has definitely stopped the production and closed all their factories for ever…

A Polaroid Template for Photoshop CS2

To bring back memories i’ve created a Photoshop CS2 Polaroid Template you can download here. It makes you able to change your Screenshots or Real Photos into a Polaroid-Style Picture.

Just pimp up your Homepage, Forum-Profile, Banners, Mail Template or what ever. Let your pics look like Polaroids, old-fashioned but still sweet and somehow stylish.

It’s a simple PSD-File that contains the basic elements of a Polaroid: The typical frame, a quadratic space for the photo, a reduced color saturation, a green photo filter and some extras like splotches and scratches to make the photo look older.

The Template was meant to give you an easy start. It’s up to you to add more or other details.

How to create a Polaroid Template

For all of you who don’t have Photoshop or just want to create their own Polaroid Template, here’s a small description of the process:

1. Create a new file that has a vertical form like 400px width and 500px height. The background should be white.
2. Add an original photo or screenshot, but cut it to a quadratic size before.
3. Fit the photo into the frame, at the top, left and right there should be a border of 10px size.
4. Especially when you use a sims-screenshot, reduce its color saturation (-25). Normal screenshots often look too “over-colored”.
5. Add a green photo filter.

Just get inspired

There are some more things you can do. Here are a few ideas:

• Add some effects to the frame
• Change the color of the frame
• Add some text to the white space at the bottom
• Try other photo filters
• Add scratches, splotches and other dirt
• Even add hip graphics of your choice
• Try other shapes, like horizontal or even circles

And so on…

You will see, it’s still fun to fool around with Polaroids. And it can be done in only a hand full of minutes! Don’t let this interesting photo-technique end up in the forgotten corners of time too early ;)

Goodbye, Polaroid.

Written on 15.02.2008 by MaXsiM
Category: Resources
Tags: photoshop, polaroids, psd, templates