Instant Camera

Your photos printed one at a time from a 3D instant camera. Each print slides out, develops in front of the visitor, and drops when they move on to the next one.

Create an Instant Camera

What is an Instant Camera?

An Instant Camera project shows your photos as prints coming out of a 3D instant camera. Instead of a grid where everything is visible at once, the visitor gets one picture at a time: the print slides out of the slot, the image develops from blank to the photo while it comes out, and it stays held there until the visitor asks for the next one. Then it drops, fades away, and the next photo starts printing.

One photo is one print. Upload your pictures and the camera prints them in order, one at a time.
Each print slides out slowly and develops from blank to the picture while it comes out, then stays held at the slot.
Moving to the next photo drops the print, which falls and fades, and the next photo starts printing.
Any aspect ratio works. The picture is cropped to fill the square picture area of the print, so there is nothing to crop by hand.
An optional caption per photo shows in the counter pill above the scene, next to the position.

Best use cases

Photo stories

A trip, a wedding, a weekend. Visitors watch each moment print and decide when to move on.

Event recaps

The best shots from a launch, a conference or a party, revealed one at a time instead of dumped in a grid.

Portfolios

A photographer or illustrator showing a short, curated set where every piece gets its own moment.

Product shots

A small collection, a lookbook or a drop. Captions carry the name of what is on each print.

Announcements

A birth, an engagement, a new home. Three or four photos that people will actually look at.

Mood boards

References and inspiration for a client, printed in the order you want them read.

Creating an Instant Camera

Step 1: Upload your photos

Create a new project, pick Instant Camera, and upload your pictures as images. Each image becomes one print.

Formats: JPG, PNG and WebP.
Portrait and landscape both work. The picture is cropped to fill the square picture area of the print.
Use at least 1000 px on the short side. Very large images are downscaled by the GPU, so there is no need to shrink them first.

The picture area of the print is square. A wide or tall photo is cropped to fill it, so keep the subject near the centre of the frame.

Step 2: Order and caption

Arrange the photos in the order you want them printed and add a caption where it helps.

The order you set is the order the camera prints in.
Add a caption to any photo. It shows in the counter pill as "Caption · 3 / 12".
Photos without a caption still count in the position; the pill just shows the numbers.

Step 3: Tune the printing

Open the Settings tab to decide how the prints come out and what happens at the end of the set.

Print time and develop time decide how slowly each print comes out and how long the picture takes to appear.
Frame colour changes the paper border around every picture.
Loop and autoplay decide what happens after the last photo and whether prints run on their own.

Step 4: Share

Save and share the public link, or embed the camera on your own site, the same as every other project type. Projects on the free plan show the i3Dify watermark.

Instant Camera settings

Everything below lives in the Settings tab of the editor, in the order the editor shows it.

Printing

How each print comes out of the camera. Print time is the number of seconds the print takes to slide out and stop at the slot. Develop time is the number of seconds the picture takes to appear on the blank print. Frame colour sets the paper border around each picture. Show counter toggles the caption and position pill above the scene.

Sequence

What happens after the last photo, and whether prints run on their own. With Loop on, the first photo prints again after the last one. Off leaves the last print held in the slot. Autoplay prints the next photo on a timer, with the interval in seconds. Any interaction pauses autoplay for a moment.

Camera angle

Where the scene is looked at from. Tilt moves the view up or down, Turn moves it around the camera, Move left or right and Move up or down slide the whole view without turning it, and Zoom sets how close the scene sits. The angle you pick is the starting view for every visitor.

Background

The shared scene panel: a solid colour, a gradient, a pattern or an image behind the camera. Same options as every other project type.

Links dock

Buttons to your website, your socials or anything else, shown next to the scene. Position and style are shared with the navigation dock.

Navigation

The camera has one direction that matters: forward. Every input below moves to the next photo, and going back prints the previous one again.

Drops the print and starts printing the next photo. Use the dock button, click or tap on the scene, the mouse wheel or trackpad, a swipe on touch, the arrow keys, or Space and Enter. Home and End jump to the first and the last photo.

A camera cannot un-print. Going back prints the previous photo again, so the visitor sees it develop a second time.

Rotate

Drag on the scene to turn the camera a little and look at it from the side. Let go and it settles back to the angle set in the editor.

Counter

The pill above the scene shows the caption of the current photo and its position, like "Caption · 3 / 12". Turn it off in Printing settings if you want a clean scene.

Current limits

What the Instant Camera does not do today, so you can plan around it.

Photos only. There is no PDF import, no video and no per-photo link on this project type.
No hotspots. The print is a picture, not a clickable surface.
The picture area is square. Anything outside the centre square of a wide or tall image is cropped away.
Before the first photo is uploaded, the camera shows a blank print with a placeholder.

Tips

Keep the set short. Ten to fifteen photos is a story; sixty is a folder.
Lead with your strongest picture. It is the one that prints before anyone has decided to keep going.
Put the subject near the centre of the frame, since the edges of wide and tall images are cropped to the square.
Use captions for names, places or dates. They read in the pill without covering the print.
A slower develop time makes each reveal feel more like the real thing. A faster one keeps impatient visitors moving.
Turn on Loop for a kiosk or a screen at an event, and pair it with Autoplay so the prints keep coming without a hand on it.

Credits

The camera model is derived from "Polaroid Camera" by Big guy on Sketchfab, licensed under CC BY 4.0, with the brand marks removed. The print is drawn by the app; its paper is a scan taken from "Polaroid Photo Sample" by Edoardo Galati on Sketchfab, also CC BY 4.0, with the brand name on the back painted out.