Guide · Updated
This digicam filter makes your photo look like it came off a compact digital camera from around 2000: hard contrast with the highlights clipped to white, loud color with blue skies, heavy sharpening, and a small 640 × 480 JPEG. Choose a photo above and download it. It runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
It is the Digicam from Clack, a film camera app for Android, ported to the browser: the same color table, compiled by the app’s own code, sharpened at the same size and saved at the same JPEG quality. The Digicam is Clack’s look of a CCD compact around 2000, made by eye, not a copy of one camera.
01 · Steps
How to make a photo look like a 2000s digital camera
- Choose a photo. Any JPEG, PNG or WebP from your phone or computer (HEIC in Safari). It is read in your browser and never uploaded.
- Look at it. It is drawn at once on the Digicam, at its own size, shown enlarged. Hold “Hold for the original” to compare.
- Set the exposure. The meter sets it from the photo. Give it more or less in thirds of a stop; less keeps a bright sky from clipping.
- Download. A 640 px JPEG at quality 72, the Digicam’s own file.
02 · The look
What makes the digicam look
A compact around 2000 had a small CCD sensor of two or three megapixels and made its JPEG inside the camera. Its colors were bright and a little hard, its highlights clipped to white, its pictures small. The Digicam makes each of those, in this order:
| Step | Digicam 100 | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 640 × 480 (VGA) on a 4:3 photo | Shrunk by halves before anything else, each pixel the average of the ones it covers, as a small sensor sees the scene. |
| Exposure | An averaging meter | The photo’s average brightness goes to middle gray. Light above the sensor’s white clips. |
| Contrast | Hard | Shadows a little deeper, mid tones a little brighter, and the top of the range pushed to white: 93 % of white comes out at 99.5 %. |
| Color | Loud, blue skies | 15 % more saturation overall; blues and cyans 25 % more again, greens 15 %, reds 10 %. Greens turned a little toward yellow, blues toward cyan. |
| White balance | A little cool | Red about 6 % down and blue about 6 % up. |
| Sharpening | Full | An unsharp mask at its full amount, 1 px wide on the 640 px file: a bright and a dark edge along every line. |
| JPEG | Quality 72 (Normal) | Fine detail and flat skies show the 8 × 8 pixel blocks of a cheap JPEG. |
The percentages are Clack’s settings for the look; the white balance’s 6 % is our arithmetic from the recipe’s steps. The order matters: shrinking first makes the sharpening’s edges and the JPEG’s blocks the size they were on the camera’s file, large on the photo.
03 · By hand
How to make a digicam effect in any editor
The same steps work in any photo editor that can resize, sharpen and save a JPEG:
- Resize the photo to 640 px on its long side, before anything else.
- Raise the contrast until the brightest parts go to plain white.
- Add saturation, most to blues and greens; cool the white balance a touch.
- Sharpen hard at a 1 px radius, so every edge gets a light and a dark rim.
- Save as a JPEG at about 70 % quality.
Or find the real thing: people buy CCD compacts secondhand for this look. What neither a filter nor an editor can add is the flash right beside the lens, fired at night: that light has to be there when the photo is taken.
04 · In the app
The Digicam in Clack
In Clack the Digicam is a camera, not a filter: Digicam 100, listed after the films. It shoots with the phone’s flash on or off, and its first recipe, Y2K, is for nights out with the flash on. Its menu is a compact’s: Size (VGA, 1M, 2M or 3M), Quality (Fine, Normal or Basic: JPEG 90, 72 or 50), Contrast (Soft, Normal, Hard, Harder), Color (Soft, Standard, Vivid) and the white balance. It films too: 160 × 120, 320 × 240 or 640 × 480 at 15 frames a second, with 8-bit sound at 11 kHz, and the finder is drawn at 320 × 240, as the camera’s small screen was.
The look starts from a different place. The filter works on a finished photo, with the phone’s contrast and extra color undone as measured across phones; the app gives the Digicam the camera’s straight frame, the light before the phone processed it. For film looks on a photo, use the film filter.
Clack is a film camera app for Android. Join the list to hear when it is on Google Play.
Questions
- What is a digicam filter?
- A filter that makes a photo look as if a small digital camera from around 2000 took it: a small file, hard contrast with highlights clipped to white, bright color and heavy sharpening, saved as a cheap JPEG. People also call it a Y2K or 2000s camera filter.
- What is a digicam?
- Short for digital camera. Today it mostly means a compact digital camera from around 2000: a small CCD sensor of two or three megapixels, a short zoom, a flash beside the lens, and a JPEG made inside the camera. People who grew up with them now buy them secondhand for the look.
- Why is the download only 640 px?
- That is the Digicam’s file: VGA, 640 × 480, the smallest size on a compact’s menu, and part of the look. The sharpening and the JPEG blocks are drawn at that size, so a larger copy would look different. In the app, the Digicam also saves 1, 2 and 3 megapixels.
- Can it add flash or a date stamp?
- No. Flash is light at the moment of the photo, and a filter cannot add light that was not there. Clack has no date stamp, so this filter does not add one either. In the app, the Digicam shoots with the phone’s flash on or off.
- Is my photo uploaded?
- No. It is decoded and drawn by your browser, on your device, and the page sends nothing anywhere.
- Is the digicam filter free?
- Yes. No sign-up and no watermark; the photos you make are yours.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Charge-coupled device
- Wikipedia, Unsharp masking
- Wikipedia, JPEG (8 × 8 blocks and the quality setting)
The Digicam is Clack’s look, made by eye; its numbers are the app’s own (its color table compiled by the app’s code), and the filter is its shader, ported to WebGL2.