Pocket Plastic

It's easy to take the iPhone's versatility for granted these days. With over 100,000 apps available, and its combination of sensors and multi-touch input, it readily morphs into near-perfect facsimiles of countless tools people once had to pay significant money for. Not just software tools like GPS, mind you, but even silly things like wave machines, spirit-levels, and you know, libraries. Naturally, photographers began to clamor for a virtual version of a once-costly, frivolous analog relic: the Polaroid instant camera.

ShakeItPhoto ($0.99) arrived first, although ShakeIt's ($0.99 / free) developer maintains that his app was submitted to Apple for review as many as four months prior. Without this knowledge, many viewed ShakeIt as a me-too effort when it was finally released with an oddly similar name. Some cattiness briefly appeared on Flickr discussion boards and blog comment sections, but the two apps eventually managed to coexist. Anecdotally, ShakeItPhoto became the more popular because it reproduced aspects of the Polaroid experience. After taking a photo, the undeveloped frame eased into view with a satisfyingly mechanical sound. Shake the iPhone, and the photo would sway from side to side, slowly fading into view. In comparison, developing a photo in ShakeIt was like shaking an empty snow globe. No visible response, no indication you were doing it right, and no fun. Eventually you'd get your photo, but the whole process was flat and boring. ShakeItPhoto not only produced consistently beautiful results, using it felt great.

The release of the iPhone 3GS unexpectedly shifted the balance. Long story short, Apple decided to tweak the camera's output to produce photos that it believed most users would find more appealing. More color, more contrast. It also meant that some shots turned out darker than they would have on an iPhone 3G. This pretty much wrecked ShakeItPhoto's processing, and the photos lost quite a bit of their blown-out, faded charm. To this day, it doesn't appear that enough has been done to address this. On the other hand, ShakeIt has received a number of small updates over time to improve its image quality. It still doesn't have any animations or sound effects, but its photos are often more attractive than ShakeItPhoto's on an iPhone 3GS.

Two examples of the underdog's innovation: ShakeItPhoto uses the same white border for every photo. Look along the top edge of the "paper" and you'll notice a speck of dust that's always there. ShakeIt has a number of different photo frames that it randomly assigns. Every now and then, you get an emulsion artifact or a smudge over the photo. ShakeIt also employs a number of different color treatments; which one you get is down to luck (akin to Takayuki Fukatsu's ToyCamera). These little details matter if you're writing a camera emulator for people who like taking photographs. And with instant and toy cameras, it's often the case that the more randomness they encounter, the more people tend to love them.

Nevertheless, ShakeItPhoto remains a great tool in good lighting conditions, and outputs a unique square format size that ShakeIt does not (ShakeIt offers a regular Polaroid-shaped frame, a longer rectangular frame with a uniform white border, and a frameless processing-only vertical rectangle). Its shortcomings can be minimized by applying an exposure fix in apps like Perfectly Clear before processing, although this reduces its usefulness as a camera app. But if you have been otherwise unfortunate enough to still be on an iPhone 3G, its better output should be one point of consolation to you. For now, ShakeIt has pulled level with its competitor, and represents one of the best faux-laroid apps on the App Store. One possible contender for the throne might be Lo-Mob, but that's another story for another time.

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Example photo #1: A dimly-lit bar. ShakeItPhoto's tendency to darken photos is visible here next to ShakeIt's interpretation, which is even brighter than the original photo.

Example photo #2: Part of an Indian temple's decorated gate in bright daylight. ShakeItPhoto provides more vibrant colors and a vignette. ShakeIt, on the other hand, emulates the greenish color cast of some Polaroid films but the effect isn't particularly well-suited to this scene.