Tag Archives: photoshop

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Poladroid Simplifies Retro Photography

Veronica Belmont wrote on her personal blog yesterday about a new application called Poladroid. The software, a simple program offered in French and English, is currently available in beta for Mac OS 10.4 or later on www.poladroid.net. So what does this little 10mb program do? One thing, and one thing only. Polaroid.

Polaroid Corporation, makers of the retro instant-developing photo products we all love[d], actually filed for bankruptcy in 2001. Since then, all products branded "Polaroid" have merely licensed the name, and were most likely cheaply made in China (read: avoid anything with the name "Polaroid" on it). With the advent of digital photography, Polaroid cameras and film slowly entered into obscurity. Their simple nature and slow shot-to-shot speed made them a staple of urban street photography and contemporary vintage art movements. With digital, though, consumers could take shot after shot without much thought (rhyme zing!). Poladroid's purpose is to take those shots and turn them into the much-loved Polaroid-esque images of the past.

So why not just use a Photoshop plugin or batch script? Well, Poladroid is free, simple and fun. In order to process an image, all you do is drag the jpeg onto the program. A few seconds later, the "undeveloped" Polaroid is spit out, and begins slowly developing. Then you wait. And wait. And even though there's absolutely no reason for you to wait, you wait some more. And this is what makes Poladroid so charming. It's just like using a Polaroid camera, in a sense. You can only process up to 10 images too, just like a Polaroid film cartridge. And if you ask me, the results look pretty cool.

You can check out some of the images I've processed below, or you can find more on the program's official Flickr group.


Blog, Photography |

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Sunrise in the Desert

This photograph is another one of my former rejects. In its original color form, this photo suffered from the awkward lighting of the moment. It was morning in the desert, and the foreground of this image was in shadow due to the mountains behind me blocking the sun. The resulting file looked more like a snapshot than what I had originally seen in my mind's eye. After converting the photo to black and white, I burned and dodged various parts of the image using Adobe Lightroom. I brought out much of what was in shadow before, and intensified the sky. Though most perceive the desert as dull and dead, an entire world of beauty awaits for those who are patient enough to find it.

Blog, Photography |

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Capitol Hill Police

If you've been following my recent bloggeries, you probably know that I tend to post images in trends. A couple weeks ago, it was images edited using Corel Painter X. Now, it'll be photos edited in Lightroom to bring out detail and tonal depth. The image above was taken during a protest in Washington D.C. back in April of this year. I initially rejected the source photograph because the composition seemed off, but I was drawn back to it by the contrast between the center officer's bright orange sunglasses, and the greys of the surrounding men. Ironically, halfway through the editing process, I converted the image to black and white. Nonetheless, I think this photograph shows great depth of field and decent visual focus. Oh, and it was shot using a 70-300mm lens I picked up on eBay for $5. That's always a plus!

Blog, Photography |

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Denver Alley

The photograph above was taken in Denver, Colorado back in July. I saw this alley and, without even thinking, snapped a photo of it. The original photograph was left on the cutting room floor, but was rescued the other day when I decided to do some creative editing on it. I won't go into details, as there are thousands of photoshop tutorial blogs out there for this specific purpose, but I will say that all edits were made in Adobe Lightroom 2. What I like about the resulting image is the immense amount of unpleasant detail. Let's make one thing clear: This alley was not a clean place. Not all photography is "pretty," yet photos that are "unpleasant" can still be visually appealing. The dirt and grime of the ground and walls are what makes this photo work.

Blog, Photography |

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Night Thunderstorm

I wish this photo hadn't initially slipped past my radar. I found it marked "rejected" in Lightroom in one of my folders from my Colorado trip this summer. This shot was taken from the back porch of the house I stayed in while a thunderstorm rolled in from the prairies. It was the test shot from a series of lightning photographs that I've previously posted. I disregarded it at first because of the wide angle, which captured the suburbs and a passing car as well as the thunderstorm. What I failed to originally notice was the starry night sky hidden behind the swirling mass of clouds in the sky. And while I also failed to catch any specific lightning bolts hitting the ground in this shot, lightning in the cloud lit it up in a majestic manner. All of the adjustments in this image were performed from within Adobe Lightroom.

Blog, Photography |

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Personal Collection: “Painted Clouds”

If you've been following my recent posts, you know the drill by now. The image above (best viewed at a larger size) was post-processed using Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter X. The actual image is from a trip to Washington D.C. in April of this year. On the flight back from D.C. to San Diego, as we flew into the sunset, a friend of mine told me to take a picture of the clouds out of the window. I usually disregard shots taken out of airplane windows as mere snapshots, but this particular shot caught my eye. I've had the original shot in my Flickr photostream for awhile now, but I decided to re-process it with an abstract vision in mind. The "painted" version obviously has more vibrant color than the plain copy, but in reality, the actual colors out the window were closer to this new version than my old edit. It's also worth noting that I took this photo with an old Pentax lens I got on eBay for ~$30. At the time, I couldn't afford the Pentax-FA f1.4 50mm I have now, so I took the poor man's route. I've since sold it back online, but there's just something special about shooting with an old lens. I'm seriously considering buying an old m42 mount 50mm Industar lens to somewhat make up for the FED-2 I sold awhile back.

Blog, Photography |

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Personal Collection: “First Flight”

Sorry for the lack of updates earlier this week, I've been working on a personal project I hope to launch in a few days. Anyway, the image above is another attempt at creating a faux painting using simple photos. The main image used is one I actually took in May 2006 using an incredibly cheap 2mp Nikon point and shoot camera. It was taken in a small airplane flying over San Diego, California, and was one of the few images from that flight that actually turned out decently clear. Unfortunately, the noise in the image made it virtually unusable. The second photograph in the composite was used for the night sky, and was taken in Anza Borrego State Park. Both images were run through Corel Painter X separately, and were later combined in Photoshop. In addition, a second copy of the main image was processed in a pseudo-HDR plugin, which brought out the low lighting of the situation. Considering that the source file is just over 500kb, it's amazing how post-processing can save an image.

Blog, Photography |

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Personal Collection: “Color and Light”

Continuing on my quest to discover new editing techniques, I give you the above photo. This photograph was taken this past July in Denver, Colorado, near Larimer Square. My first step was to run the image through a plugin that simulates an HDR look, which allowed me to have slightly surreal lighting in the photo. From there, I warmed the image slightly (though I edited the image on my laptop, which has a much cooler display than what I'm used to on my iMac), then ran it through the auto-paint feature in Corel Painter X. Though much of my previous experimentation with Painter X focused on using the "painted" image as an accent, I really made it the main focus of this photograph. After the auto-painting was complete, I layered it on top of the faux-HDR image in Photoshop. From there, I adjusted the opacity of the "painted" layer, and made it slightly more transparent in the center to give the scene some depth. And there you have it! Now, if only the cafe in the image was authentic and not a Starbucks...