Polaroid's from your iPhone

Today sees the launch of Polarock, a dedicated iPhone app that is designed to create Polaroid effects from photos taken with the iPhone or from the iPhone's camera roll.

Over the past few weeks there have been updates to existing iPhone apps, and a freeware desktop app, all offering to produce Polaroid effects from your snaps, so I have decided to test these apps to see just how good they are.

The iPhone apps in question are....

Polarock
CameraBag
Photogene

....and the free desktop app is....

Poladroid

I selected a suitable photo from my camera roll, as not all photos will work as all these apps crop the image to fit the form factor of a Polaroid (this is not a problem if you use the apps interface to take the photo).

Having selected my photo (see original below) I proceeded to process is using the above apps.

First off I tried....

Polarock (App Store link)

Priced at 59p Polarock is the new dedicated Polaroid iPhone app from Polarock, and has a very simple and straight forward iPhone interface. The current features are limited, only offering colour Polaroid effect, black and white Polaroid effect and a grunge effect that can be applied to either of the Polaroid effects. When you have created your Polaroid you can then easily add a caption (however you can not resize the text, so are limited to the number of words used) and save the photo.

Sadly this apps filter does not offer the best Polaroid effect, but if this improves and extra features are added, then this could become a good iPhone Polaroid app.

....then I tried

CameraBag (App Store link)

From version 1.4 CameraBag (priced at £1.79) added a Polaroid effect filter which like all its filters is simple and effective, as the sample below shows.

There is very little to say, other than this filter works very well.

....followed by

Photogene (App Store link)

Priced at £1.79 Photogene does not actually have a Polaroid filter, however does offer frames to frame your images, and one of those frames gives you a Polaroid look and feel.

....and finally I used

Poladroid (Website link)

Poladroid is a FREE desktop app currently only available for Mac OS X, which has a very simple interface. open the app, drag your photo in to the Polaroid camera that appears on screen and wait. After a couple of minutes your Polaroid transformed photo is complete and automatically saved to your Mac's Pictures folder, and that's it done!!

One last thing!!

Just as I was finalising this article I came across this FREE iPhone app called ProjectPolaroid (App Store link).  This is the simplest of all the apps, you simply launch the app, tap the screen load a photo from your camera roll, and that's it, the filter is applied and you have your Polaroid effect. Tap the screen again and save the image to your camera roll, and that's it, job done.

So which one is best?

If all you want is an app to convert your photos in to Polaroid's, then there are 2 winners, Poladroid and ProjectPolaroid. Although Poladroid is not an iPhone app, it does offer realistic looking Polaroid photos for nothing, whereas ProjectPolaroid is a no frills iPhone app that does an equally good job at producing Polaroid effects from existing photos directly on your iPhone. That said if you already own CameraBag, then for me its filter works the best.