A PWA camera that recreates the three-color photography method of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii: capture the same scene through red, green, and blue channels, then combine them pixel by pixel into a full-color photo with an early-20th-century look.
From 1909 to 1915, Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, sponsored by Tsar Nicholas II, traveled across the Russian Empire with a modified camera. He exposed each scene three times on glass plates — once through each of red, green, and blue filters — then replayed them through three color projectors, producing some of the world's earliest color photographs. His surviving plates are now preserved in the Library of Congress.
- Shoot three photos from the same position and composition (the interval is up to you)
- Extract one channel from each frame as grayscale: red plate → R, green plate → G, blue plate → B
- Merge pixel by pixel:
final.RGB = (redPlate.R, greenPlate.G, bluePlate.B) - Moving subjects get natural color fringes from the time offset between plates — a signature of that era's photography
- PWA: installable, works offline
- Auto / Manual shooting modes: auto captures all three channels at the set interval; manual captures one channel per shutter press
- Interval slider: 0–8 s, adjustable, live value shown on the thumb
- Vintage filter: sepia tone, lifted blacks, desaturation, vignette, and grain — toggle to compare with the original composite
- Photo history: IndexedDB local gallery, with view / share / save-to-album
https://sealpp.github.io/3color/
Open in a mobile browser → allow camera access → press the shutter. Rear camera and good lighting recommended.
Developed by sealpp