How to get a Polaroid effect on a photo?

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:40

If you love retro photography, you have probably at least once thought about trying to age your photos to make them look more vintage and mysterious. In this article, we will look at the most popular type of retro photo cards - polaroid photos. How to achieve the polaroid effect using a computer or phone?

A polaroid photo - easy and simple?

Usually, at the mention of the word "retro", there are associations with monochrome or textured photographs. But the Polaroid effect is lively, interesting cards with a special style. The easiest way to get the cherished square shots is to go to a photo workshop, where they will not only process them, but also print them. But let's try it ourselves.

You can use special sites for processing photo cards, for example, polaroin.com. This service is specifically designed for the Polaroid effect. Here you can select the area of the photo that will be included in the final version, the effect, the frame, and even the fill color of the image - red, blue,green. You can add a signature to the card. The free version of the site allows you to get a fairly normal quality, however, if you want better pictures, you can increase the resolution of photos for a fee.

Another fairly easy site for such photos is instantizer.com, which helps you to write on the photo and rotate the composition. Here you can not choose the area of the photo that will be included in the picture, and the site may not crop it the way you would like.

Polaroid in Photoshop - the easiest lesson

In order to get a photo with the Polaroid effect using "Photoshop", you need to follow the following instructions. First you need to open the photo and duplicate the layer, change the blending mode to soft light. Next you need to create a new layer and fill it with 070142 color, setting the blending mode to exclusion. After that create a new layer and fill it with de9b82 color, change the blending mode to soft light and opacity to 75%. Next, create a new layer and fill it with fed1eb with soft light and 50% opacity, fill this layer with 070044 and set the overlay exclusion.

After the done manipulations, the layer with the original photo is duplicated, dragged to the top and the blending mode is changed to soft light. Now you can crop the photo and paste it into the pre-downloaded Polaroid template.

Polaroid software

What kind of photo program helps to get a similar effect? Among the most popularfor IOS users, programs such as Polamatic, Instant, ShakeItPhoto, Swing, Afterlight. There are also interesting applications for Android smartphone owners: Instant, Polamatic, InstaMini, PolaroidFx and others. All of these apps are intuitive and easy to use.