Aging Photos Digitally

[Original digital photo and the aged image from Wanokoto Labs]

I cannot read a lick of Japanese but I got a link today for a site (Wanokoto Labs, if the URL is any indication) that allows you to either upload a photo or pop in a URL of an image and the software will age, degrade, scuff and tarnish a modern, digital photo to make it look like an old glass plate image. I saw no controls to adjust how much it aged or degraded the image but the results are pretty amazing.


[Original digital photo and the aged image from Wanokoto Labs]

While on the subject of instant gratification photo manipulation, I also acquired a copy Poladroid, a donation-ware application which lets you manipulate a digital image to create a Polaroid-like finished product. Since SX-70 film is gone forever, this is the next best thing. The application is drag and drop and you "shake" your pictures to watch them develop. With an option-click, you can save a version of the image in any of its development stages.




[Poladroid samples in various stages of development using the same original images as above]