Helping Polaroid transform pixels into real-life pictures with AR

The Polaroid Lab transforms smartphone-taken pictures into real-life Polaroid photos. It needed a fast and stable application to satisfy thousands of users worldwide.

Overview

The client

Polaroid, previously Polaroid Originals, has now finally reclaimed its legendary name. As a brand, they’re devoted to instant photography in its original iconic format. They launched five instant analog cameras and recently, a completely new product revolutionizing the market of instant photography, the Polaroid Lab.

The challenge

After the success of the OneStep+ camera, the team needed to enhance the Polaroid app to unveil the potential of their newest product, the Polaroid Lab.

The Polaroid experience fueled by AR

Custom photo collages

The app can divide one digital image into separate sections to enable users to print out a collage from up to 9 frames. This is possible thanks to the custom coordinate-aware view component that calculates the needed frame space without distorting the photo’s proportions or ratio.

AR scanning to save and share memories

Apart from supporting the features of the Polaroid Lab and the One Step+ camera, the app has some real gems hidden inside. Thanks to our AR scanning, users can save the printed Polaroids in the gallery on their phone and enhance their photos with film by scanning a unique barcode preprinted on the Lab photos.

Customization & speed - the core Polaroid's priorities

Custom ICC profiles

The app’s heart and brain lie in the custom ICC profiles and tailor-made color management. There was no way the photos could look as if they were “scanned” or “reprinted.” We needed to implement the ICC profiles from scratch to look just as good as the real Polaroids.

Tailor-made data buffering system

Hitting more than 140k of user downloads, the Polaroid Originals app could not be slow. We developed our own data buffering system to prevent user crashes and cut the buffering in case of memory shortage.

Deliverables