5 ms·

Let's Enhance – free online image upscale and enhancement with neural networks

21 points by RedCrowbar 9y ago

dustinmoorenet 9y ago
This might me awesome, but I don't want to create yet another account to see it work.
- XOPJ 9y ago
  I get "Invalid email address" for my email so they are applying some sort of aggressive filtering on their email acceptance anyways which IMO is a really bad sign they are building an email list they want to profit from.
  - obiefernandez 9y ago
    If you look at their pricing model, which is 4 free... sign up for paid plan to get more then the aggressive email validation makes a bit more sense. I'm not connected to them in any way, just trying to give the benefit of the doubt.
advisedwang 9y ago
Signup required to view results, abandoned my session.
- darbagegump 9y ago
  Same. It wouldn't even accept mailinator.
- singularity2001 9y ago
  same. Can't they say so before grasping our pictures???
- yohann305 9y ago
  deceiving tactics
tzahola 9y ago
Before/after comparison with nearest neighbour “interpolation”. Lol!
obiefernandez 9y ago
FWIW I tried it out on a small screenshot of an old grayscale portrait and was very happy with the results. Feels like the future.
- jack6e 9y ago
  I tried on a larger color picture that was taken with a low quality phone camera and received entirely unimpressive results. It was hard to tell if anything had even been done.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
I would pay for this in a heartbeat if this was a desktop app I could use offline. On the cloud I'm not so sure. With all the stories going around HN I barely trust Facebook and Google with my photos.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  Such services won't realistically be a desktop app, since that pretty much requires them to give away their service and "secret sauce" in a way that's infinitely reusable / copyable for anyone who cares enough to extract it. The usual situation for services like this is that it either runs on their servers, or you're willing a to pay sufficiently large amount to make it worth the full standard enterprise B2B sales process, a negotiated contract incl NDAs and liability and for them to do an on-site installation. So if you're a big organization that wants to care about trade secrets or classified information, then it can be arranged, but it's not manageable for individual consumers or small businesses.
  - slashcom 9y ago
    Alas, the "secret sauce" is already freely available: http://waifu2x.udp.jp/ http://waifu2x.udp.jp/. The only real difference is the (very, very appreciable) effort to make it commercialized software. Anybody who cares enough to disassemble it for reuse could build the core tech themselves.
    - throwaway2016a 9y ago
      Looking at that project on github[1] I can't help but to think the algorithm need to upsample anime images (like in this project) might be different than the one needed to upsample photos. Anime has the benefit of having a lot of sections of solid colors. Edit: Actually looking at the source further it appears they also have models for photos as part of that project in addition to the model for anime. [1] https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x
      - titanovo 9y ago
Lerc 9y ago
Title should be updated to reflect sign-up required. Anything else I could say about their tactics would be less than charitable.
shock 9y ago
> Your photos uploaded > We've started processing. It takes some time, meanwhile you need to create account to access your results. What a dick move! Why not say I need to give you my email from the start?
- adamc 9y ago
  Yeah, totally agree with this.
jaredcwhite 9y ago
uploaded an image—says ETA 22 minutes! I guess I have to wait until the machine finishes dreaming all the missing details...
- titanovo 9y ago
  Hacker news effect - autoscaling was a bit slow
- vlprans12 9y ago
  LetsEnhance CTO here. I shamelessly grabbed part of our GPU cluster yesterday for experiments with new nets and infrastructure. Didn't expect this HN thread coming out :)
titanovo 9y ago
Hey guys, that's Alex - creator of Let's Enhance. Tool is great and blah-blah, but I see you are reeeealy frustrated with our email/registration policy. Ok, hands clear here - no email list selling, we just want to earn some buck from professional users and give regular guys a way to use it for free. That's why we require a real email or FB acc. TBH, IF some of you can come up with a better strategy that will be more polite to users, keep our cloud cheap (when we were 100% free I burned lots of cash just it keep it running in GPU cloud), etc, etc. Really, no BS here – marketing advice is really welcomed here.
- gmiller123456 9y ago
  >but I see you are reeeealy frustrated with our email/registration policy No, they're frustrated that you aren't up front about it. Trying to BS around the actual problem just makes it worse. I really couldn't imagine giving money to a company engaging in such tactics, I feel like I'd have to have a lawyer go over every last detail to ensure I'm getting what I expect.

21 points by RedCrowbar 9y ago

dustinmoorenet 9y ago

This might me awesome, but I don't want to create yet another account to see it work.

XOPJ 9y ago
I get "Invalid email address" for my email so they are applying some sort of aggressive filtering on their email acceptance anyways which IMO is a really bad sign they are building an email list they want to profit from.
- obiefernandez 9y ago
  If you look at their pricing model, which is 4 free... sign up for paid plan to get more then the aggressive email validation makes a bit more sense. I'm not connected to them in any way, just trying to give the benefit of the doubt.

advisedwang 9y ago

Signup required to view results, abandoned my session.

darbagegump 9y ago
Same. It wouldn't even accept mailinator.
singularity2001 9y ago
same. Can't they say so before grasping our pictures???
yohann305 9y ago
deceiving tactics

tzahola 9y ago

Before/after comparison with nearest neighbour “interpolation”. Lol!

obiefernandez 9y ago

FWIW I tried it out on a small screenshot of an old grayscale portrait and was very happy with the results. Feels like the future.

jack6e 9y ago
I tried on a larger color picture that was taken with a low quality phone camera and received entirely unimpressive results. It was hard to tell if anything had even been done.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

I would pay for this in a heartbeat if this was a desktop app I could use offline. On the cloud I'm not so sure. With all the stories going around HN I barely trust Facebook and Google with my photos.

PeterisP 9y ago
Such services won't realistically be a desktop app, since that pretty much requires them to give away their service and "secret sauce" in a way that's infinitely reusable / copyable for anyone who cares enough to extract it. The usual situation for services like this is that it either runs on their servers, or you're willing a to pay sufficiently large amount to make it worth the full standard enterprise B2B sales process, a negotiated contract incl NDAs and liability and for them to do an on-site installation. So if you're a big organization that wants to care about trade secrets or classified information, then it can be arranged, but it's not manageable for individual consumers or small businesses.
- slashcom 9y ago
  Alas, the "secret sauce" is already freely available: http://waifu2x.udp.jp/ http://waifu2x.udp.jp/. The only real difference is the (very, very appreciable) effort to make it commercialized software. Anybody who cares enough to disassemble it for reuse could build the core tech themselves.
  - throwaway2016a 9y ago
    Looking at that project on github[1] I can't help but to think the algorithm need to upsample anime images (like in this project) might be different than the one needed to upsample photos. Anime has the benefit of having a lot of sections of solid colors. Edit: Actually looking at the source further it appears they also have models for photos as part of that project in addition to the model for anime. [1] https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x
    - titanovo 9y ago

Lerc 9y ago

Title should be updated to reflect sign-up required. Anything else I could say about their tactics would be less than charitable.

shock 9y ago

> Your photos uploaded > We've started processing. It takes some time, meanwhile you need to create account to access your results. What a dick move! Why not say I need to give you my email from the start?

adamc 9y ago
Yeah, totally agree with this.

jaredcwhite 9y ago

uploaded an image—says ETA 22 minutes! I guess I have to wait until the machine finishes dreaming all the missing details...

titanovo 9y ago
Hacker news effect - autoscaling was a bit slow
vlprans12 9y ago
LetsEnhance CTO here. I shamelessly grabbed part of our GPU cluster yesterday for experiments with new nets and infrastructure. Didn't expect this HN thread coming out :)

titanovo 9y ago

Hey guys, that's Alex - creator of Let's Enhance. Tool is great and blah-blah, but I see you are reeeealy frustrated with our email/registration policy. Ok, hands clear here - no email list selling, we just want to earn some buck from professional users and give regular guys a way to use it for free. That's why we require a real email or FB acc. TBH, IF some of you can come up with a better strategy that will be more polite to users, keep our cloud cheap (when we were 100% free I burned lots of cash just it keep it running in GPU cloud), etc, etc. Really, no BS here – marketing advice is really welcomed here.

gmiller123456 9y ago
>but I see you are reeeealy frustrated with our email/registration policy No, they're frustrated that you aren't up front about it. Trying to BS around the actual problem just makes it worse. I really couldn't imagine giving money to a company engaging in such tactics, I feel like I'd have to have a lawyer go over every last detail to ensure I'm getting what I expect.