Polaroid Zink 'emulsion' lift.

First attempt at ‘Polaroid Emulsion lift’ with polaroid ‘Zink’ media.


Polaroid brought out a little digital printer that prints onto special paper called ‘Zink – (zero ink)’. You send a digital file to the printer via Bluetooth, and it prints out a 3 x 2 inch photo with an adhesive back. The paper itself is made of layers and under each layer are ink type crystals. When it prints it heats up parts of the image as it rolls out of the printer and activates the crystals giving you a print.

I had heard that Polaroid Zink media can be manipulated like some Polaroid film can. You can do the equivalent of an ‘emulsion lift’. This is something I’ll have to try.

My first attempt didn’t go well. I put a print into hot water and it didn’t last long!

What we have here is the top layer (yellow streak), image layer (red) and the backing sheet with a bit of the blue layer left on it. At the back of the backing sheet is a layer you can peel off to reveal an adhesive side. The water was way too hot.

Try again. This time the water was about 50 degrees. The image stayed together but was very soft. Here’s what’s happening.

The top layer (yellow) is falling apart. The next layer (red) is very soft and the bright blue marks are from my fingernail going through the red layer and scraping some of the blue layer off. I think the water is still too hot.

Try again. This is the image I started with.

This time the water was at room temperature. I left it in for 30 minutes. This is what I got.

The yellow ‘splat’ is the top layer and I can’t seem to do anything with it. The red image layer stayed intact and spread out fairly well. The remaining photo has the blue layer still on.

I’m going to try and get it off and put it on top of the red layer. It comes off pretty well.

Although it came off easily, putting it on top of the red layer proved very difficult and I could not get it spread back out once I had it on. This is the best I could manage.

The red and blue layers both had distinct images on them and putting them back together did improve the quality of the seperate layers. I’m not sure it’s something I can find a use for though.