Feeling Polaroid

Posted on | January 5, 2010 | 5 Comments

My new favourite app for the iPhone is ShakeItPhoto which allows you to turn your photos into splendidly crappy and brilliantly retro Polaroid images. I mean, look at these (click for bigger images at Picasa):

Aren’t they cool. You can convert images already on your iPhone or, more likely, you can take a photo using ShakeItPhoto and watch as it spits out a virtual Polaroid. If you shake your phone you can speed up the ‘development’ process. Shaking and waiting for the image is something that’s really only fun the first time you do it so – thankfully – there’s an option to turn that off.

It has a very nice way of making pretty ordinary and mundane things look really rather pretty (in a polarised, saturated, colour-shifted, grainy sort of way). The picture format also forces you to think differently. Normally when taking a photo, most mortals are used to thinking in rectangles but thinking in squares makes you look at things differently.

ShakeItPhoto cheered me up immensely on a snowy morning trip to the shopping centre. It’s not quite perfect – as it crops the standard rectangular iPhone image, it could use a screen overlay to show what will be included in the final, Polaroided photo. Other than that, though, it’s really excellent. If you’ve an iPhone, try it.

You can see the full gallery over at my Picasa.

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