How to create Polaroid like pictures with your Mac

January 18, 2009 by Sukrit Dhandhania

Polaroid is a pretty neat software that allows you to give your pictures a Polaroid-like look and feel - and it’s free. Polaroid is still in beta but I did not face any issues with it. Let’s install it and check it out.

Head over to the Polaroid website and download the latest Mac release of the application. I downloaded the file ‘Poladroid 0.9.5r5b English‘ for this guide. It’s a 10 MB download so it might take some time. You can use this time to select a few pictures that you want to give the Polaroid look and feel to.

After the download completes it should extract automatically and mount into your Mac’s Finder. Drag and drop the Polaroid application from the mounted folder into your Applications folder. To launch it go to your system’s Application folder and double click on Polaroid. When Polaroid is done loading it pops up in a window like the one in the picture below.

Do as the application requests. Drag a photograph you want to turn into Polaroid onto the section that says Drag & Drop your picture here. This process of converting the picture into Polaroid takes some time, so you want to be patient here. Once it’s done it the preview window will have a small read “swirl” in the bottom right corner.

polaroid done converting

By default this picture is stored in your user’s “/home” folder, in the Pictures directory. To change this click on the Polaroid menu at the top of your screen, then go to Preferences. Inside the Polaroid Preferences you will find button that says Select which you need to click. Then take Finder to the folder where you want Polaroid to place its pictures, and click OK and then Save.

Polaroid has a group on Flickr where you can go check out some of the Polaroids that people have uploaded. You should also consider contributing some of your own photos to the group. It’s quite amazing what results this simple little application comes up with. Below you’ll find an example of a Polaroid created photo.