Polaroid Swing is a new moving photos app with a twist

Polaroid Swing is the newest app that lets you capture and share artistic 1 second videos with the world. It lets you view your creations frame-by-frame, by either swiping your finger or mouse over them or by tilting your iPhone.

Polaroid, one of the most popular brands in the world, has come together with a Silicon Valley tech startup to create Polaroid Swing. The app has a lot of talent behind it: former Apple engineers, computer vision scientists from MIT and the designer of Instagram’s original filters and logo.

What differentiates Polaroid Swing from competitors is that it produces a very high quality one-second video in the form of a moving photo. The quality easily beats that of Apple’s Live Photos. You can view the moving photos by either swiping your finger on it or tilting your iPhone sideways.

The app itself is very minimalistic. Even more so than Instagram. The app opens up with the news feed called Highlights where you can see uploads by other users. When you visit a user’s ‘living profile’, you can follow them, view their pictures and see their bios. The bio is overlayed on a motion photo too which works just like other photos in Polaroid Swing.

When capturing a photo, there are only a few options. You can either use the front or rear camera, apply any of the four filters: Polyvision, Ansel, Land and Santa Fe, and reverse the direction of the moving photo.

Images from Polaroid Swing can also be embedded anywhere on the Internet or shared on Twitter and Facebook. Try moving your mouse left to right or vice versa, on the image below.

You can see a lot more demo images on their official website.

Polaroid Swing brings out a unique perspective on the popular trend of moving photos. With Live Photos, Boomerang videos and others as competitors, Polaroid Swing really one-ups them by focusing on better quality. If that is what you are looking for, give the app a try. It is free to download from the App Store. An Android version is ‘coming soon’ (just like Prisma).

Download Polaroid Swing for iPhone

P.S. here are some moving photos ideas from the developers:

• Reverse the moving photo to perfect the moment.
• Take 3D selfies by rotating your phone around you.
• Select live filters for inky smooth Polaroid moving photos.