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Show HN: Remove unwanted objects in photos simply by dragging boxes
- orobinson 4y agoI remember when the smart object removal feature was added to photoshop and it was pretty cool. The fact that you can now get the same functionality working even better in a free browser tool is mind blowing.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoCool tool but just as a suggestion, having that example of removing 'Copyright' watermarks is probably a bad idea in terms of legal CYA and just general decency in terms of respecting attribution. If that is what people want to do with the tool is beyond your control but to showcase it in your example gets you on the hook for ill-intent.
- rob74 4y agoYup, that was my first thought too: people will probably have the idea of using the tool to remove watermarks on their own anyway, but by giving it as an example you are putting yourself in the line of fire.
- johndough 4y agoWhy would this cause legal issues? (assuming the author owns the rights to the images shown in the preview) I can think of two related topics: * Export restriction on encryption (does not apply here) * YouTube's content policy on hacking tutorials (not applicable here either, since this is not YouTube)
- vermilingua 4y agoBecause it doesn’t need to be illegal to cause legal issues. All it takes is one wealthy enough, persistent enough, annoyed enough plaintiff, to make your year extremely shitty.
- ComputerCat 4y agoLOL there are plenty of people like that
- lovelearning 4y agoSome time ago, youtube-dl, a downloader tool for YT, faced legal troubles from RIAA simply for showing a copyrighted video URL in a demo. Something about anti-circumvention. [1] Given that this project is an alternative to Adobe's features, the latter may feel tempted to claim this is a tool intended for copyright circumvention. [1]: https://commonsware.com/blog/2020/10/24/youtube-dl-avoiding-pointless-copyright-problems.html https://commonsware.com/blog/2020/10/24/youtube-dl-avoiding-...
- mminer237 4y agoThere are different forms of secondary liability for copyright infringement: https://matthewminer.name/law/outlines/3L/1st+Semester/LAW+661-001+%E2%80%93+Intellectual+Property/Secondary+Liability https://matthewminer.name/law/outlines/3L/1st+Semester/LAW+6... Particularly, inducement liability could be a real issue here. In MGM v. Grokster, the Supreme Court unanimously said, "[O]ne who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoI've often wondered if I could get Apple computers sued by ripping CDs with iTunes and sharing the results (ripping is copy infringement in the UK, the media companies had the government remove format-shifting rights and we don't have Fair Use [our Fair Dealing is very conservative]).
- ekianjo 4y agoremoving watermarks does not remove the copyright...
- xwdv 4y agoI say the opposite. At first I didn’t care much for the removal of people, but taking watermarks out of images had me sold.
- gc0119 4y agoThank you @xwdv! Watermarks are certainly one of the main use cases.
- bitL 4y agoThat sequence can be easily replaced by some other neutral text like "Lake Tahoe" instead of "Copyright" and still most users would get it.
- 1234letshaveatw 4y agoWhy does that sound familiar? Was that in a postcard picture from back to the future or something?
- nrdgrrrl 4y agoThat's welcome to Hill Valley you're likely thinking of. https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/106917/1368185/Hill%20Valley%202010_905.jpg https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/106917/1368185/Hill%...
- gc0119 4y agoAh that’s a sharp eye!!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gc0119 4y agoThanks for pointing out, it’s indeed our own edited photo from Lake Tahoe. Will swap the word with “watermark”. Appreciated!
- test1-test1 4y agoSuperb, works nicely for a test run that I did.
- gc0119 4y agoThanks for testing it out!!
- remedan 4y agoThis is a bit of a tangent, but when I opened the page, the heading looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/mYHKd0Q.png https://i.imgur.com/mYHKd0Q.png Turns out the Font family is specified as "Copperplate, Papyrus, fantasy" and my system didn't have any font that matched. Fixed it by installing the Impact font, as it matches "fantasy".
- speps 4y agoThat's a bold choice of default fonts...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- netsharc 4y agoAren't those the fonts used in one of the MS Frontpage's standard homepage templates? (Can anyone from the 90's confirm?)
- chucksmash 4y agoTotal tangent but Imgur simply does not load on Firefox for Android now? Linked page just spins forever "loading" the linked image until I request Desktop Site, at which point it happily loads. An image hosting site that cannot (errrrr, "cannot") display images. Imagine.
- Boltgolt 4y agoWorka absolutely fine for me with Firefox for Android 102
- chucksmash 4y agoAhh, only seems to have that issue in private mode.
- gc0119 4y agoFixed, thanks a bunch!
- mbforbes 4y agoReally nice. I tried removing someone behind a wire grate, and it correctly identified them, replaced the wire grate and filled in the grate holes with decent background imitation.
- gc0119 4y agoThank you @mbforbes!
- brk 4y agoI tried with a moderately complex image [0] and it failed to properly remove anything. Edit: saw matsemann's comment - I was using Firefox, where selecting areas and clicking remove did nothing. Tried Chrome and got the same result of progress bar and then broken image. Same result in Safari. All on MacOS. [0] https://i.imgur.com/mbEnZYD.jpg https://i.imgur.com/mbEnZYD.jpg
- virtualritz 4y agoCompletely unusable on mobile for me. Is this expected?
- sscarduzio 4y agoBroken in my android too
- sokoloff 4y agoI tried it (several hours ago) on iOS and it worked very well. Others are complaining about HN-induced overload, so it might be that.
- gc0119 4y agoShould be back now.
- matsemann 4y agoHmm, in Firefox a progress bar shows for a few seconds after clicking "remove", and then nothing else happens. In Chrome the image disappears and is replaced by a broken image icon.
- thyrox 4y agoCouldn't find the pricing page. Is this free? What's your business model?
- gc0119 4y agoWe will definitely keep it free. We are still trying out different business plans and will leave this answer open for now. Sorry for the vague response.
- Wistar 4y agoI will pay for it now for commercial use.
- gc0119 4y ago@Wistar I'm over the moon hearing this and would love to make this official asap. Could you please shoot us an email at support@cleanupphotos.com so we can get you at least onboard with a beta? I'm so overwhelmed to hear serious users willing to support us!
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI tried this with the Stalin And Nikolai Yezhov picture, but the algorithm gave me a "question mark."
- justsomehnguy 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32086584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32086584
- KronisLV 4y agoSeems like the endpoints of the service itself now seem to return HTTP 500 for some reason, so once you click on "Remove", nothing happens. Example URL: https://cleanupphotos.com/cleanup/false/NUMBER_GOES_HERE Response contents: Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. Either the server is overloaded or there is an error in the application.
- hansvm 4y agoNice job! I made one of these back in the day. Also allowing positive selections gives the model a lot more information and gives the user more power. You can use that to easily remove gridlines and smudge marks in photos of drawings without having to select every little thing you want deleted, or similarly you can positively select the main subject and a bit of scenery, negatively select a few passers-by, and let the model remove a crowd. The key point is that it moves some of the training-time bias toward a runtime selection, allowing better results on a wider variety of tasks (at the cost of more clicks on photos the model understands with few removals happening).
- gc0119 4y agoThanks a bunch @hansvm, certainly enlightened by expert's view!
- swyx 4y agothis is an alternative i have come across: https://cleanup.pictures/ https://cleanup.pictures/
- Markoff 4y agoseems to be much faster and more user friendly than OP's site and worked also better on one example I tried
- njgroene 4y agoMeant as constructive feedback for OP: the UI is certainly more agreeable on the eyes, and I find the brush selection more convenient than OPs box selector. Still: great work, OP!
- moffkalast 4y agoNgl both do a pretty great job, OP's may be slightly better even. Unfortunately both output images at thumbnail quality, so it's an academic exercise only and not anything actually useful.
- gc0119 4y ago@moffkalast, thanks for the feedback! It's currently at 1024 pixels, hope that's not as bad as the experience yesterday. The processing speed will slow down a bit though, hope that won't affect the usability on phones. Thank you!
- gc0119 4y agoThanks @njgroene, will try to improve the UI asap! I agree, most users might only need brushes. Great feedback, helps prioritize important aspects!
- kk6mrp 4y agoWhy does the text scale with screen size?
- gc0119 4y agoWe haven't yet tested all the screen sizes so we've built it to look nice on laptops and phones. Please let me know if the texts are showing up weird on your device. I'll make sure it doesn't. Thanks a bunch!
- quietthrow 4y agoThis reminds me of pixels magic eraser technology which I think is specialized for removing people.
- phh 4y agoI'm rather ignorant in that domain, so I wonder if some people could enlighten me. What are the AI tasks behind this? I can identify two steps: - Identifying an approximate shape of background vs foreground to get something more precise than just a rectangle. What is it called? Just background detection? - Actually filling-in the holes. I think this is called a diffusion task? Is that correct? ddg-ing around looks like diffusion is the name of the method rather than the actual task, but I can't find the name of the task. I'm curious at whether some existing open models would be usable on smartphones to make an opensource app (or maybe there are already such apps I'm unaware of)
- drewhayward 4y agoFor the two steps you listed it could be image segmentation followed by image in-painting.
- Someone 4y agoThe technical term is “inpainting” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inpainting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inpainting), so “inpainting algorithms” will give you papers on various ways to do it. In general, diffusion isn’t a good way to do it, as diffusion fills in the missing hole with data with fewer small details than the surrounding area. Modern smartphones are fast enough for implementations.
- sbdaman 4y agoPixel has this built into the OS.
- Markoff 4y agoit works reasonably well on clothes blocked by objects, I suppose not so great for skin blocked by clothes
- gc0119 4y agoI've personally tried to remove watches, glasses, small things blocking the skin and they are fine. But for large portions, it won't be good. Someone pointed out things like a better algorithm might give more realistic results. Those are in our pipeline, but they require more hardware resources which might end up as a sign-up service. Similar thing goes to processing higher resolution images. This is valuable feedback, thank you!
- Wistar 4y agoThis produced really impressive results in removing a creased dent in a car door and a pile of rocks from in front of a fence. Both photos were at an oblique angle and I thought the result was good enough for commercial use. I used Chrome on an iPad.
- gc0119 4y ago@Wistar We're happy you enjoyed it! Thank you!!
- costcofries 4y agoThis is awesome, thank you!
- gc0119 4y agoThank you @costcofries!
- echelon 4y agoJust an FYI, CloudFlare is blocking this.
- jenthoven 4y agoThis is a cool version of a suggestive AI product with a great, simple interface for reviewing. Well done -- we admire this type of product at Kapwing, the company I lead.
- gc0119 4y ago@jenthoven respect to the hustlers kapwing.com! Thank you!
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoFWIW the tip, "hug the box to", comes across a little awkwardly to me, I'd prefer "wrap the box around". Although perhaps the emotional implications of using "hug" are worth the unusual nature of the phrase.
- gc0119 4y agoMakes sense! Thanks @pbhjpbhj!
- michaelchisari 4y agoOf course, I had to test it with this photo: https://imgur.com/a/ypyIhB3 https://imgur.com/a/ypyIhB3 Not too bad! Can definitely tell it's been edited, but for a quick removal it was painless.
- gojomo 4y agoThat image should be the 'Lena' of person-removal image benchmarks.
- nevf1 4y agoThis gave me a good chuckle, thanks!
- gus_massa 4y agoIt's so good that I though you were making a joke and posting the classic edited photo, but after looking at the wave patterns, they look different. Also the bottom of the other side of the channel is better in your version. For context: https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-...
- gc0119 4y agoThanks for the thumbsup on painlessness!
- gc0119 4y agoWow, that's a really dark one! Never thought it could reproduce a piece of history, you made my day.
- IYasha 4y agoChecking your browser before accessing cleanupphotos.com. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please allow up to 5 seconds… Redirecting… FOREVER. Thanks for using this garbage service.
- gc0119 4y agoWe are working on stabilizing the app, sorry for the trouble.
- IYasha 4y agoIt's not your fault, it's common to CloudFlare.
- juunpp 4y agoI would not have said 'garbage service', but CloudFlare does make we want to punch a wall or sometimes. I get the impression that half the people using CloudFlare don't actually need it.
- gc0119 4y agoIn this case we actually benefit from CloudFlare on the launch. The hug is quite hard from HN. We love you HN.
- tux1968 4y agoI was prepared to be underwhelmed, but it did a very good job on the three photos I threw at it. Very well done indeed.
- gc0119 4y agoThanks for trying it out and the compliments!!
- guerrilla 4y agoI guess this will be a slight improvement on people cropping their exes out of pictures on dating sites...
- divbzero 4y agoI remember someone made a parody demo video for Photoshop’s content-aware fill where you could take a photo of a messy room and clean it up with just a few clicks! Doesn’t feel far fetched anymore.
- gc0119 4y agoWhoot thanks for the comparison!
- terrycody 4y agoReally neat tool!
- juunpp 4y ago> We are commited to protecting your data privacy. Your photos will never be saved, so please make sure to download after editing. Email support@cleanupphotos.com. Then why not release an offline version?
- gc0119 4y agoAn offline version is not yet available. For most users, edge devices most likely won’t be able to handle the computational resources. We’ll work hard towards an offline desktop app, thank you!!
- juunpp 4y agoWell, now you've made me look like an idiot with the original post. What 'computational resources' are needed here, a 2nd-gen GPU? I think this kind of object removal would be awesome if it were implemented as a Gimp plugin, and even if you needed to wait for a few seconds for the changes to apply. Gimp allows scripting in Python, which seems to be what most DL projects are using these days: https://gimp.org/ https://gimp.org/ https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-scripting.html https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-scripting.html I am just skeptical of any website/backend-locked software that asks for my data these days -- for which we have Big Tech to thank for -- and this is not the first website-only project shared on HN.
- gc0119 4y agoThat's a really great suggestion using Gimp. I agree, backend-locked is not ideal. I really appreciate the feedback, thank you!
- gardenhedge 4y agoI tried it but it left a dirty blob where it removed the thing from my photo. A bit underwhelming.
- gc0119 4y agoIf you see the dirty blob, here are some things to consider 1. Switching between box and brush, in most cases one of them would work better. 2. Box would be preferred for full object removal, Brush would be good for texture retouch, but it could vary some times so try both. 3. The result won't be pretty on big object removal. 4. Remove the dirty blob or "Undo" and box/brush again. We are working on more advanced backend to get a cleaner job done, sorry for the frustration. Thanks for trying it out and the valuable feedback!
- t_mann 4y agoBookmarked. Thanks OP!
- gc0119 4y agoThanks for liking it @t_mann!
- gc0119 4y agohttps://cleanupphotos.com https://cleanupphotos.com provides a mobile/desktop interface for editing photos simply using your thumb/mouse to drag boxes (automatic) or brushes to remove unwanted objects. It’s free!!