The Ultimate Guide to Polaroid Emulsion Lifts in 2025

In this tutorial you'll learn how to do Polaroid transfer emulsion lifts in 2025. The video condenses a heap of information from other other tutorials I've watched as well as my own experiences making over 200 of these one-of-a-kind analog film photographs. The polaroid transfer emulsion lift is a 50 year old alternative photographic process technique that involves lifting the a polaroid photo off it's original surface and transferring it to another. It's a great way to create unique artworks and creative abstract photographs, and explore the material quality of photographic images. It's also pretty accessible and easy to do once you get the hang of it, and has a great DIY feel. The camera I used to capture these images is the Polaroid Sun 660 vintage camera which I bought refurbished from Retrospekt, as well as regular old colour Polaroid film. The process is unique to Polaroid film, this is the only crucial part. It does mean unfortunately it can't be done with Instax cameras - but I think this makes it all the more special. This video was filmed at our studio, Kindred Cameras, in Melbourne, Australia. Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 00:18 - What is a Polaroid Transfer Emulsion Lift? 00:41 - Equipment needed for Polaroid Transfer Emulsion Lifts 01:05 - Preparing the Polaroid 01:36 - Peeling the Polaroid Print 02:47 - Lifting the Emulsion 04:12 - Transferring the Emulsion 05:12 - Creatively manipulating the photo 06:14 - What to do when you are finished 06:27 - How climate and time affects your success rate 08:37 - What to do if the gel and emulsion layers separate 09:25 - Tips for creatively manipulating the image 10:51 - Final photos