Polaroid cutter
A Python tool that turns ordinary photos into Polaroid-style prints: it styles them, lays them out on A4 and drives a Silhouette Cameo to cut them out.
Phone photos to cut Polaroids, at home
01
Why I built it
- I wanted real Polaroid-style prints of photos with friends, without a Polaroid camera.
- Cutting cards by hand is slow and never quite straight.
- The idea: print on a normal printer and let a Silhouette Cameo cut every card exactly.
02
What it does
- Styles each photo: crop, rotate, a Polaroid film look and a white frame.
- The film look goes beyond a sepia tint: contrast, a warm cast, soft focus, glow, vignette and grain.
- A small desktop app previews every photo live, with its own crop and frame settings.
- Lays the photos out as Polaroid 600 cards, four to an A4 page.
- Prints registration marks so the Cameo can find the sheet, and writes a matching cut file.
03
What was hard
- Registration marks: Silhouette doesn’t publish the spec, so I matched an open-source implementation.
- Fitting four cards on A4 left only about 0.1 mm of room next to the marks.
- Print and cut share one layout calculation, so the cut always lands on the print.
- Silhouette Studio imports DXF at the wrong scale, about 0.84×; I traced it down and correct for it by hand.