When my brother Joe came up with this simple method for turning some favourite digital snaps into perfect Polaroids for the backdrop of our Showcase stand, I knew you’d love to get your hands on the template. So, I’ve invited him to do his first guest post here and share the DIY – over to you bro!
Hi, Joe here!
If you love Polaroid format pictures as much as I do, you’ve generally got two options: buy a bargain Polaroid camera then shed tears over the cost of the film, or shell out almost as much on send-away Instagram printing.
Now, I print my DSLR photographs for the princely sum of 10p each at my local Asda, so the above options just didn’t add up for me. So instead, I decided to have a go at designing a Photoshop template that meant I could print any digital photo I liked as a Polaroid – and it worked!
Turn any digital photo into a Polaroid print
Your photos as jpegs
Photoshop (or if you want almost the same thing for free, I recommend GNU GIMP)
*Need help with layers? Watch this YouTube video for Photoshop or this one for GIMP.
**The template size is 12×8 inches which will automatically be scaled down to 6×4″ by the photo processor but allows the file to be a higher resolution to start with. If you chose to print it in a different ratio, the Polaroid image will no longer be square.
I really hope you like it – I’ll be on hand in the comments section to answer any questions!
– Joe
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{Photographs, tutorial and template © Decorator’s Notebook}
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Hi, i love this idea so much and would love to use this for my friends wedding. However i was wondering if you happened to have any landscape polaroid versions? some of my pictures don’t work with the normal format. Or do you know anywhere i can find a template like that?
thanks so much!
Hi Dee – thanks for your comment. I’m afraid I haven’t seen polaroid photos produced in a landscape format. I think part of the charm is the proportions of the square frame and cropping the images to fit However if you download GIMP you could try playing around with the frame in the template we’ve provided. Good luck!
Hello! I just wanted to say thank you for putting this post up – I’ve used it for some photographs and it looks really great!! :)
Our pleasure Rosey – so pleased to hear you found it useful!
hhhhmmmm these all are looks awesome These templates are attractive
thanks for share keep it up!!
thank you so much for this ! :)
a little question here, what kind of paper should be used when printing this photographs? thanks xx
The proportions of the template are designed for the photos to be printed professionally in a photolab rather than on a home printer. We prefer a matt finish photo paper but they would work on gloss too if that’s your preference.
This looks amazing! I was wondering where you get them printed though? On Asda’s website it looks like the smallest they do it 6″x4″. Or do you just trim an inch off the bottom afterwards? Thanks
Oh wait, I’ve just seen in the instructions, silly me!
Worked a treat – I squared down some photos, added the G’MIC SX-70 Polaroid filters before pulling the image into the template. Looks great but lacks the shadow vignetting of the pola frame. Still, a great and cheap way to add a lot of retro charm to your pictures.
Thanks Stephen,
I’m glad you liked it. Deliberately held back from a heavy vignette as I personally don’t think it works for every photo you might want to put in there.
Would love to see any results if you can tweet us a pic! @decoratorsnotes
Joe
this is an awesome diy!! perfect for a holiday card insert! thanks for sharing..
I thought this was a really clever, cost effective idea! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, so thank you!
Thanks for sharing this template – nice one!
As its printed as a 6″x4″ photo, does it mean the photos are much bigger than the usual 3.5″x4.2″ polaroid prints?
Thanks for the template, much needed!
Hi Katie,
The width will be 4″ as opposed to 3.5″ so they will come out as slightly larger than a modern Polaroid. However the older pull-apart Polaroid format is 4″x5″ which is what you’ll get from this template once the bottom inch is trimmed.
Enjoy!