I found a box of Polaroid film that was about 5 years expired. The pictures all came out brown and I couldn't bring myself to throw them away..So I did this!

This is my first instructable so let me know how to improve it.

Step 1: Open Up the Picture

I found the best way to do this is with the BACK SIDE of an exacto knife.

First, flip the picture over and bend the top a little bit. a "bulge" will appear and you can tuck the exacto knife under to loosen it. Do this on both sides. You don't have to pull the side flaps up all the way down to lift the top one.

Once you have the side flaps up, use the knife again to carefully dig under the top flap to make that rise.

Squeeze the sides to pop the Polaroid open.

Step 2: Choose a Digital Picture

My friend, John, and I used to take Polaroid pictures years ago so I chose to use a more recent picture of him. It could be a birthday present if John liked really boring, fake things.

Step 3: Importing Into Photoshop

Make a new image in Photoshop: 3.5"x4.25"

The next step is to set up guide lines. If you don't want to make your own, download the Forged Polaroid.psd I have included. Otherwise, there are two ways to manually do this. The first way is to drag down from the rulers (ctrl+R or Apple+R to enable the ruler) to the appropriate lines.

The second (more precise?) way is to go to the menu View and click New Guide. You want guides at the following locations:
Horizontal .25"
Horizontal 3.375"
Vertical .25"
Vertical: 3.25"

Once these guides are in place, paste in the image you want to use and resize it (ctrl+T or apple+T). What you want to be visible should fit to the inside of the guide lines, but be sure to overlap to compensate for alignment errors.

Forged Polaroid.psd
Download

Step 4: Give the Picture the Polaroid Look

While this is by no means a perfect way of doing it, I did what I could roughly basing it off a real Polaroid picture I had with me.

Step 1: Image > Adjustments> Hue/Saturation
As you can see, I dropped the saturation about 55. Experiment

Step 2: Image > Adjustments > Photo Filter
Polaroids (mine, at least) usually have a sort of orange tone to them, so I added a rather dense filter onto my picture.

Step 3: Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
Consumer Polaroids cameras don't have great focus to them so a tiny blur makes my picture look more "authentic"

Step 4 (optional): Use the blur tool to blur out some of the stuff in the distance. Like I said, Polaroid pictures don't have great focus so stuff in the background may or may not be in focus.

Step 5: Print and Assemble

Cut out the 3.5"x4.25" picture you made. I find it easier to cut off the corners on the bottom so it fits better.

Flip the Polaroid over and secure the flaps down using glue or tape. Tape is much easier if no one is going to see the back side of the picture.

And now you're done! Experiment and you'll probably have better results than I did.

Step 6: Other Things to Consider..

Here are some ideas to make this project work better and (possibly) make it cooler.

-Get a better printer
-Use a photoshopped picture of something impossible. No one argues with Polaroids.
-Glue the top side's edges so the image presses to the clear plastic better.