COLOGNE—The Impossible Project, the unlikely startup company that formed in 2008 with the intention of resurrecting Polaroid instant film, is proving that its goals are quite possible. It's been producing film since 2010, and at Photokina it announced that its Instant Lab, which was previously only available to Kickstarter backers, is going to be available at retail.

The Instant Lab Universal mounts a smartphone, screen down, to the top of a bellows, and works with many popular smartphones and tablets, including the iPhone 4 through 6, any iPad with a Retina display, the iPod touch (4th and 5th generation), the Samsung Galaxy S III through S5, and Galaxy Note II and 3. Additional devices will be supported in the future.

You'll need to download the Impossible Project app to your phone or tablet to get started, but once you've attached your handheld device to the top of the Instant Lab, you'll be able to print any image stored on the phone to Impossible's 600 format Polaroid film.

You may think of the Instant Lab as a printer, but in reality it's a camera. It uses a 4-element coated lens and a shutter mechanism to expose the film. Instead of taking a photo of moving life in front of it, it works like a copy stand and photographs the image displayed on your smartphone's screen.

The Instant Lab Universal will go on sale on Nov. 15 for 169 euros (about $220).

The company has added Steve Herchen (pictured), a veteran chemist who worked at Polaroid for close to 30 years, to help develop these new film stocks and improve the company's existing lineup. Herchen serves as both CTO and COO of The Impossible Project.

Herchen spoke of some of the technical difficulties in bringing Polaroid film back to market. Some of the custom chemicals that the company had used in making its film were no longer made, and when the Impossible Project started it had no access to any of Polaroid's chemical recipes. He's worked to move the Impossible film closer to old Polaroid stocks, but as the color-sensitive negative that is used to capture the image is made of a dozen layers, each thinner than a human hair, it's no small feat.

The Impossible Project is working to improve its film in several areas—the first of which is speed of development. Current film takes about 40 minutes to completely develop, but the company wants the next generation to do the same in 20 minutes, with an eventual goal of a five-minute full develop time. You'll be able to see part of the image before that, of course, but those are the times that it takes to fully develop. Other improvement goals are to improve the opaque layer that protects the film from light during the development process, and to improve colors in terms of accuracy and saturation.

All this work has led to the announcement of the Generation 2.0 color film for 600 cameras. It's going to be available in November and should show an image emergence time of two minutes, but it will take longer to develop fully.

The company currently makes 30 types of film, but plans to offer another 40 before the end of the year. Some of the new films will be limited editions, including film with various frame colors and patterns. Impossible is also launching films with circular borders so you can shoot round images, starting with a black-and-white stock that's available now, and color versions which will follow in October. In November Impossible is launching cyanotype and magentatype films, which will capture images that are heavily tinted with blue and red, respectively.

The company is also working on a new Polaroid camera, the I-1, which it plans to release in mid-2015. Details are scarce, but the camera will be able to operate in fully automatic mode, or can be controlled manually via your smartphone thanks to Bluetooth connectivity. Impossible also plans on releasing Generation 3.0 of its film at that time.