5 ms·

Show HN: Piqtur, a wep app for enhancing your images with beautiful effects

41 points by eliaskg 15y ago

instakill 15y ago
This is beautiful, simple, and fast.
SyneRyder 15y ago
Looks cool, and your app might be landing at just the right time, considering Picnik is disappearing in a few weeks. Lots of people are looking for something just like this. As a user though, you lost me at the first screen. I run my browser at full screen, so dragging a photo over is a bit of a hassle. Plus, I'm not ready to trust your app just yet with one of my photos - is my photo being uploaded to your servers? Is it staying client-side? I could go looking for a photo that I don't mind uploading but... meh, too much hassle. Adding a couple of example images would let me play with the app immediately. I like your app philosophy, though. I look forward to seeing the app evolve.
- instakill 15y ago
  I don't think it's unreasonable to stick with only the drag & drop feature in order to keep the upload page clean and uncluttered. It's really not that much effort to temporarily re-size your window.
  - peterii 15y ago
    FWIW I actually bailed for the same reason. I do appreciate the simplicity but it seems like it would be easy enough to add an unobtrusive link in the bottom corner "...or click here to load up a sample image!"
- eliaskg 15y ago
  I understand your thought. Yes, the image is sent to the server for several reasons: 1. Perspective. The app is able to render all effects in the client's browser except for the 3d perspective. This is made on the server side 2. Download. Since I want to give the user a "native" download, the only way to do this is with a server. If it would be possible to render (quality) 3d transformations in canvas and to send out a download I event wouldn't need a server for processing the image.
CWIZO 15y ago
Add a regular upload button (if you can). And maybe you should provide some sample images, that way I can start playing around right away without searching my hardware for a image. And this one is a deal breaker: when I exported the image it was absolutely useless. The quality has dropped substantially, rendering it (pun intended :P) useless for further use. edit: could you write about how you made all this? Just a quick summary would suffice.
- warp 15y ago
  I agree with the need for an upload button. I'm on Ubuntu 11.10 and dragged an image from Thunar to Firefox. Firefox just opened the image instead of it opening in your application.
- eliaskg 15y ago
  That's interesting, I never had any quality loss with my images. Maybe you could send me your original image so I could investigate that. All effects except the 3d perspective are rendered via canvas in the client's browser. After that the image gets sent to the server which adds the perspective (if needed) and sends out the download.
  - CWIZO 15y ago
    Sure, just tell me your email (I just followed you on twitter (@janhancic), follow me back and you can DM the email address to me there if you don't want to publish it here). The picture in question was, funnily enough, taken in your home town Munich :)
antonp 15y ago
I like it. Care to elaborate on what libraries/framework/tech you used?
- eliaskg 15y ago
  If you scroll down on the main page you can see a list of open source libs I used.
itmag 15y ago
Fornicating hell! Thanks for showing me what's possible with HTML5 and JS. I am inspired to do stuff like this myself now. No chance you will release the source?
- eliaskg 15y ago
  The source isn't that interesting. It just was a lot work ;) But http://www.cappuccino.org http://www.cappuccino.org is a good starting point.
ZanderEarth32 15y ago
This is fantastic. I need something exactly like this most of the time. To be honest, I'd pay for this in the Mac Appstore. Nice job amigo.
Craiggybear 15y ago
Very nice effects well rendered! Image quality was fine.
jamesbritt 15y ago
If you have to tell people how to pronounce a name then there's a problem. If the name is a homophone for a common word or term then it makes it somewhat confusing when people talk about it. (Try having a conversation about the Ruby database gem Sequel). Bottom line is you're better off having the name pronounced as it looks: pik-tor. It's distinctive and less confusing.
meow 15y ago
Wow, what an elegant and simple to use app. It feels a tiny bit sluggish though (or may be its just my firebug pulling me down)
latchkey 15y ago
Very nice job. The only thing is that it I had to click the text name of the effect to turn the effect off. That was a bit confusing at first.

41 points by eliaskg 15y ago

This is beautiful, simple, and fast.

Looks cool, and your app might be landing at just the right time, considering Picnik is disappearing in a few weeks. Lots of people are looking for something just like this. As a user though, you lost me at the first screen. I run my browser at full screen, so dragging a photo over is a bit of a hassle. Plus, I'm not ready to trust your app just yet with one of my photos - is my photo being uploaded to your servers? Is it staying client-side? I could go looking for a photo that I don't mind uploading but... meh, too much hassle. Adding a couple of example images would let me play with the app immediately. I like your app philosophy, though. I look forward to seeing the app evolve.

instakill 15y ago
I don't think it's unreasonable to stick with only the drag & drop feature in order to keep the upload page clean and uncluttered. It's really not that much effort to temporarily re-size your window.
- peterii 15y ago
  FWIW I actually bailed for the same reason. I do appreciate the simplicity but it seems like it would be easy enough to add an unobtrusive link in the bottom corner "...or click here to load up a sample image!"
eliaskg 15y ago
I understand your thought. Yes, the image is sent to the server for several reasons: 1. Perspective. The app is able to render all effects in the client's browser except for the 3d perspective. This is made on the server side 2. Download. Since I want to give the user a "native" download, the only way to do this is with a server. If it would be possible to render (quality) 3d transformations in canvas and to send out a download I event wouldn't need a server for processing the image.

CWIZO 15y ago

Add a regular upload button (if you can). And maybe you should provide some sample images, that way I can start playing around right away without searching my hardware for a image. And this one is a deal breaker: when I exported the image it was absolutely useless. The quality has dropped substantially, rendering it (pun intended :P) useless for further use. edit: could you write about how you made all this? Just a quick summary would suffice.

warp 15y ago
I agree with the need for an upload button. I'm on Ubuntu 11.10 and dragged an image from Thunar to Firefox. Firefox just opened the image instead of it opening in your application.
eliaskg 15y ago
That's interesting, I never had any quality loss with my images. Maybe you could send me your original image so I could investigate that. All effects except the 3d perspective are rendered via canvas in the client's browser. After that the image gets sent to the server which adds the perspective (if needed) and sends out the download.
- CWIZO 15y ago
  Sure, just tell me your email (I just followed you on twitter (@janhancic), follow me back and you can DM the email address to me there if you don't want to publish it here). The picture in question was, funnily enough, taken in your home town Munich :)

antonp 15y ago

I like it. Care to elaborate on what libraries/framework/tech you used?

eliaskg 15y ago
If you scroll down on the main page you can see a list of open source libs I used.

itmag 15y ago

Fornicating hell! Thanks for showing me what's possible with HTML5 and JS. I am inspired to do stuff like this myself now. No chance you will release the source?

eliaskg 15y ago
The source isn't that interesting. It just was a lot work ;) But http://www.cappuccino.org http://www.cappuccino.org is a good starting point.

ZanderEarth32 15y ago

This is fantastic. I need something exactly like this most of the time. To be honest, I'd pay for this in the Mac Appstore. Nice job amigo.

Craiggybear 15y ago

Very nice effects well rendered! Image quality was fine.

jamesbritt 15y ago

If you have to tell people how to pronounce a name then there's a problem. If the name is a homophone for a common word or term then it makes it somewhat confusing when people talk about it. (Try having a conversation about the Ruby database gem Sequel). Bottom line is you're better off having the name pronounced as it looks: pik-tor. It's distinctive and less confusing.

meow 15y ago

Wow, what an elegant and simple to use app. It feels a tiny bit sluggish though (or may be its just my firebug pulling me down)

latchkey 15y ago

Very nice job. The only thing is that it I had to click the text name of the effect to turn the effect off. That was a bit confusing at first.