By Graham K. Rogers

As digital technology has taken over from analog, so some companies adapted, while others perhaps reacted too late. We recently saw Kodak file for bankruptcy and it is currently restructuring. Also synonymous with film technology, although in a different way, was Polaroid. Once a widely used camera and film technology, the change to digital almost killed it completely and it now exists in a reduced state. An app has appeared on the App Store this week carrying the Polaroid name.

The original Polaroid "Land" cameras were widely known, but by the 1990s sales had reduced to such an extent that the company folded. The name was eventually sold and while some cameras were made in China, this too ceased in 2009 and the name was sold again (Camerapedia).

One of the features of the Polaroid camera, apart from the unique packets of film, was the way the image appeared as the photograph completed its developing process. Some odd but interesting effects were possible if the process was interrupted.

Many of the photography apps that I have in my library use filters. A notable example is Camera+ and an app I recently came across, Pix. To beat these, a new app has to have something special. This new app from Polaroid -- Polamatic: Made in Polaroid -- is nicely put together. It is easy to use in the main, but only saved small iPhone camera images. It has little star quality coming so late to the game.

Polamatic

At the bottom of the screen are three tools: the camera button in the center, access to the Photo Album to the left, and to the right a slider that took me back to the last image (saved or not).

Once a photograph is brought into the screen, it is displayed with a large border, just like the Polaroid images we used to see from the analog cameras. At the top of the screen is a camera icon to the left, to return to that part of the app. To the right is Save. The controls for changing the images are at the bottom: frame style, filters (12, plus original), text, export, and Polaroid store where (currently) 3 more sets of filters and frames are available for $0.99 each as in-app purchases.

There are 12 frames available in the app, including "New" which is the basic frame. The filters are mainly older effects, like K-Lab or Pyrophoric. There are two black and white filters, Mono and Yin Yang, with the latter giving a different level of contrast.

Text enables a user to write in the broad part of the frame at the bottom of the shot. The font is looks like handwriting and is made more interesting by the availability of q dozen colors. The color may be changed before or after the text is typed in. However, any text is not cancelled when a new image is used, so a caption on one photograph will be on the next, so this must be cancelled or changed manually by the user.

Export of an image may be made to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and Instagram. Just off the screen is also an email export icon.

I was really pleased with the images that were produced with these filters, although they are not much more than may already be available, while the frame styles may not suit everyone.

Comment

I also tried this on the new iPad and the app only displayed in the iPhone (x1 and x2) size. Images saved were 572 x 692 (725KB), so there was no major difference here (apart from the clumsy feel of the iPad for taking photographs).

Despite the name and the nice styles that are available to a user, this needs some changes made, especially to the sliders (flash and camera selector) and most of all to the image export size.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.