The short version

  1. Shoot at night or indoors. The look depends on the flash being the brightest light in the scene, so turn down the lamps or step outside after dark.
  2. Use a flash, close up. Stand about an arm's length from the camera. A close, direct flash gives bright faces and a dark background.
  3. Pick a digicam film. In the Flashbae photo booth, choose CCD Cam (free) or Y2K Digicam for the whole strip.
  4. Or re-shoot an existing photo. Pick an AI look such as Disposable Flash, add the photo, and tap Make it.
  5. Finish with a date stamp. Add the date to the strip, the way the old cameras printed it in the corner.

The Y2K flash look is the photo from a compact digital camera around the year 2000: a hard flash straight on, faces bright and a little shiny, the background falling off into dark, colours cool and punchy, and highlights that blow out to white. It's the opposite of the soft, evened-out photo a modern phone takes.

What makes a photo look Y2K

  • Direct flash as the main light, close to the lens.
  • A dark background, because the flash only reaches a few metres.
  • Cool, crisp colour from the cameras' simple white balance.
  • Blown highlights on foreheads, cheeks and anything shiny.
  • A date stamp in the corner, for the full effect.

How to shoot it

Light matters more than the filter. Shoot at night or in a dim room, get close, and let the flash do the work. In the Flashbae photo booth the screen itself flashes white for every frame, lighting your face from the front the way a small on-camera flash would.

Then pick a flash film for the strip. CCD Cam (free) gives the cool, crisp 2000s digicam; Flash Glow (free) is warmer, with glowing skin; Y2K Digicam is punchier, with dark corners; Disposable has the grain of a throwaway camera. Compare the flash films.

How to add the look to a photo you already have

A colour filter can't add a flash that wasn't there. An AI look can: it re-shoots the photo with the light of a flash while keeping your face and pose. Disposable Flash adds direct flash and punchy Y2K colour; Midnight Flash puts you on a dark street under a raw flash. Results take about 15 seconds, and an intensity slider fades back toward your original.

If the photo already has flash, the free film editor's Digicam and Flash Pop filters push the colour the rest of the way without AI. More options: digicam and Y2K flash filters.