Retro Polaroid Photography

If there's something that digital cameras of today lack, it is the charm of the old classic cameras. Black and white prints, faded colours, old memories. At times, it is nice to lose some details for nostalgia's sake.

One of my favourite programs these days is Poladroid. It converts your digital pictures into Polaroid-like prints, with a striking resemblance to Polaroid photography of the 80s. Polaroid photos are square and printed on chemically treated paper that develops instantly. There's some vignetting, difference in colours and an overall casual feeling to photos taken with a Polaroid camera.

Poladroid brings it all back! And with the same recklessness as a regular Polaroid camera.

Here are some pictures taken with a regular digital camera, processed by Poladroid.



More pictures can be found on Flickr's "Be Poladroid" group.

Download Poladroid (for Mac and Windows)

Photos less vibrant in your browser?

Do you experience a loss of vibrancy and flat colours in your photos when you view them through your browser? If so, then read on.

I noticed this problem when I began uploading photos to my Flickr account. My photos looked spectacular in PhotoShop and iPhoto, but when viewed from Flickr, the colours appear really flat and dull.

The problem lies in whether or not browsers use the photos' embedded colour profiles.

Firefox doesn't use embedded ICC colour profiles by default. Safari uses embedded colour profiles. My flickr photos viewed through Safari appear rich and vibrant.

These two photos show the difference clearly:





Does your browser support embedded colour profiles? Here's a quick test. Click the URL below and look at the image.

http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

If you see one proper image, then your browser is fine! If you see the image broken up into four quadrants, then your browser needs fixing. Read my notes on possible "solutions" below.



Solution:

First, if you are using Internet Explorer, Opera or Google Chrome, as of May 2009, you are out of luck. Better get used to looking at dull and flat colours. After all, you ARE using hopeless browsers.

Safari supports embedded colour profiles by default. No action required. Close this window and enjoy the Internet.

Firefox 3.0 and above supports the use of embedded colour profiles, but some "visionaries" at Mozilla chose to leave that feature disabled. So, for Firefox, we have to tweak some settings to enable the use of embedded ICC colour profiles.

Step 1: Type "about:config" in Firefox's address bar.

Step 2: In the Filter text box, search for "gfx".

Step 3: Set "gfx.color_management.enabled" to "true" by double clicking anywhere on that line.


Instructions from LifeHacker on how to do this.
Firefox 3 Colour Profile support from dria.org.

If you think this is too complicated, try Sean Hayes' Color Management Firefox extension for doing this.