[HN Gopher] AMA: Ivan Kutskir, creator of Photopea
___________________________________________________________________
AMA: Ivan Kutskir, creator of Photopea
Author : ent101
Score : 345 points
Date : 2021-04-11 08:24 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reddit.com)
| indysigners wrote:
| Photopea is super easy to use and I'm using it almost every day,
| despite having a fully licensed PS 2021 version installed on my
| iMac.
|
| Photoshop is just way to slow compared to Photopea. So it's both
| easier to use and much faster than the original.
|
| Kudos to Ivan for this!
| IvanK_net wrote:
| Thanks a lot! Photopea can do many things other editors can not
| do, e.g. opening a PDF in a PSD way (with editable text layers,
| vector shapes, clipping masks, bitmaps as smart objects etc.).
|
| You can also use it to convert Gimp, Sketch, Figma, SVG and
| other formats to layered PSDs.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Thank you for making Photopea, and thank you for keeping the
| keyboard shortcuts as they are in Photoshop!
| FounderBurr wrote:
| If it's free it wouldn't be crippled with ads.
| junon wrote:
| Love the site but they're incredibly hostile toward those with ad
| blockers. So no wonder they make so much.
| yosito wrote:
| I just tested it out with uMatrix and uBlock Origin in Firefox
| and it works fine. I wonder what ad blockers you were using
| that made you think it was "incredibly hostile"? I only work on
| Photoshop files once a year or so, but next time I do, I'll
| gladly pay to support the ad-free version of the app.
| paulcole wrote:
| It's an ad-supported business. What do you want them to do for
| people who use ad blockers, roll out the red carpet?
| k__ wrote:
| Web apps I use for my job on a regular basis:
|
| - AWS Cloud9 (IDE)
|
| - Google Docs (Office Suite)
|
| - Gravit Designer (Vector editor)
|
| - Photopea (Photo editor)
|
| - Google Mail
|
| What are your favorite web apps?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| VS Code is, de facto, a web app, and I've seen well-working
| browser versions of it.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I was just thinking why there isnt a place to find those apps.
| danybittel wrote:
| draw.io
| petepete wrote:
| - Excalidraw (https://excalidraw.com/)
|
| It's rather good.
| underwater wrote:
| That sounds like a lot, but ads on Photopea are pretty
| disruptive. They take up a significant portion of the screen in
| an app where having enough space to see everything is a real
| problem.
| jart wrote:
| I saw lots ads from Adobe pop up. Can anyone help me understand
| why Adobe is funding a guy in the Czech Republic to give away
| for free a pixel perfect closed source clone of their flagship
| product? I also can't find the privacy policy.
| Rhedox wrote:
| They're probably just buying ads from something like Google
| Adsense without knowing where they'll be displayed.
| tehlike wrote:
| They are probably stealing users from photopea instead
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Well that makes for a tough choice: should i pay $240/year
| for photoshop or $40 for pp to get rid of ads
| shawnz wrote:
| "Enjoying this product? Try the real thing"
| [deleted]
| LeanderK wrote:
| I wonder why there's no way to pay to hide those ads.
| terramex wrote:
| There is, click on red 'Account' button on top.
| https://i.imgur.com/EQtpEoA.png
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Well ads probably generate more revenue, so that could be one
| reason.
| Normille wrote:
| Stylebot [or similar]: .app > div:first-child {
| min-width: 99vw; } .panelblock.mainblock {
| flex: 1; }
| xupybd wrote:
| Wow that's a slick app for a one man band.
| SuchAnonMuchWow wrote:
| needs a (2020) in the title
| janmo wrote:
| Those numbers were for 2019. I bet that he is making over a
| million a year now.
| kermire wrote:
| You're right. See:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26769141.
| [deleted]
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| He does seem to offer premium accounts.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Does it work with iPad/Pencil?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I am very impressed. More featured than Gimp and Krita in some
| ways.
| nothis wrote:
| Feature counts are meaningless. There's only like a dozen
| things in Photoshop you actually need. What counts is a smart,
| efficient UI with a good hierarchy and consistent arrangement.
| Gimp fails entirely at this, not any feature issues. I'd
| happily strip 80% of its features for an interface that doesn't
| awkwardly overlap buttons at the least convenient moment.
|
| Photopea instead copies Photoshop's interface, which is its
| real asset.
| aahortwwy wrote:
| The trick is that everyone needs a slightly different dozen
| features.
| rijoja wrote:
| Such as?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| In Photoshop / Photopea you can select a layer and add an
| effect such as stroke, shadow, etc. In Gimp, you can do the
| same with filters... The inconvenience to me is that filters
| are immediately rasterized, so the effect becomes harder to
| change.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| For me it's about how it comes closer to how I used Photoshop
| than I can with Krita or Gimp.
|
| But neither Krita nor Gimp are supposed to be drop-in
| replacements for Photoshop anyway so that's okay.
| tomcooks wrote:
| Not having to install Gimp nor Krita is great, given all the
| disk space they occupy.
|
| As an added bonus with Photopea I have to relearn GUI patterns
| nor shortcuts, I can apply what I've learned in years of PS
| usage.
|
| This is an opportunity for FOSS, if the objective is to
| increase adoption from casual users. I wonder if the GIMP
| version that was made to look like PS is still a thing
| rijoja wrote:
| The deb package for GIMP is like what 20MB? I won't count
| dependencies such as GTK here since they really wouldn't
| exist without the GIMP project.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| When uncompressed and unpacked, GIMP is 112.25 MiB and
| Krita is 189.45 MiB on Arch. Which doesn't seem like a lot
| to me these days given their feature set, bundled stuff
| etc.
| vvoyer wrote:
| Hey Ivan, congrats!
|
| Had a great time with you 2 years ago when you came to Nantes,
| France to explain "Developing the best free photo editor". Check-
| out his explanations here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZmaeC_Ma5A
|
| Legend.
| young_unixer wrote:
| > With a full time job as full stack developer at a good company
| he would have done a lot more. The guy is good, at a FANG he
| would earn 200+ guaranteed and a pension plan.
|
| I don't want to attack this comment in particular, specially
| because they're saying this to simply support the argument that
| the guy is an excellent programmer, but it irks me when people
| say stuff this assuming that an excellent programmer always has
| easy access to a FAANG.
|
| Some people simply live in underdeveloped countries where their
| talents can't shine and they have no way to get an interview at
| FAANG, some people are either too young or too old to be a good
| candidate, and a myriad other things that could get in the way of
| an excellent programmer. In such scenarios, an Internet business
| like this is the only way out for some programmers. I'd bet there
| are hundreds or thousands of genius programmers living in Russia,
| Brazil, the Balkans, Guatemala and many other countries that
| simply couldn't land a job at FAANG even if they wanted to.
| Escapado wrote:
| I mean even in germany it's not easy. The average salary of a
| SE here is about 65k before taxes. Most senior engineers I met
| make about 80-85k before taxes (~50k after taxes) (I am located
| in hamburg). Even for well booked freelancers about 1 in 10
| people make more than 200k a year (140k being the average which
| results in about 72k profit after taxes).
|
| I just had a quick look at google, netflix, twitter and
| facebook and they don't even offer any SE positions here.
| Amazon has some in Berlin but they pay around the same salary
| as stated above.
| thrower123 wrote:
| That's just not very much money, ouch. At least compared to
| here in the US where VC money is sloshing around so much,
| driving all compensation higher.
|
| With everything being remote right now, people have been
| taking jobs on the California wage scale, but living in
| Peoria.
| dx034 wrote:
| To be fair, living costs are also much lower. I'd estimate
| living costs in the US to be on average at least 30-40%
| higher, plus high property costs in the Bay Area. Germany
| has some expensive areas but most parts are still
| relatively cheap compared to many US cities or places like
| London or Paris.
| chefkoch wrote:
| And in low CoL areas in Germany there are almost no IT
| jobs and pay less than quoted above.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| To be fair, property prices in Germany (buying) are
| insane, and if you account for that, it makes the
| salaries seem low. Munich is currently on par with the
| bay area per square footage/meters, at much lower
| salaries.
|
| And unless you've been grandfathered into a rent
| controlled apartment, inner city rents for newcomers are
| overpriced AF, especially after the new rent controll law
| kicked in in Berlin, further restricting supply and
| increased the prices for newcomers.
| igeligel_dev wrote:
| Amazon pays a lot more here in Berlin. People in Germany
| forget to add stocks to the total compensation. Source:
| https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/salaries/Software-
| Engi...
|
| Otherwise, in Berlin there are other bigger tech companies
| and with remote opening up more and more the salaries tend to
| increase. Currently the biggest companies in Berlin when it
| comes to compensation: Microsoft, GitHub, Airbnb, SAP,
| Wayfair, Amazon, Datadog (Remote), Snowflake, Shopify
| (Remote), Hubspot (Remote), Spotify (Remote), DigitalOcean
| (Remote), MongoDB, Stripe (Remote). I wrote an article about
| it here: https://www.kevinpeters.net/top-tech-companies-
| berlin-2021
|
| Most of these companies offer more close to 90-100k or even
| more (depends on the stock). So it is not FAANG but it gets
| better and better throughout the years.
| Escapado wrote:
| Thanks for your perspective! I had no idea the stock
| compensation was THAT high. Sheesh I might want to
| reconsider my current situation!
|
| Btw, I should probably not post this but we share the exact
| same name and work in the same field. :D
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > it irks me when people say stuff this assuming that an
| excellent programmer always has easy access to a FAANG
|
| ...or assuming that an excellent programmer (or, in fact, just
| a programmer) wants to deal with FAANG in the first place.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Or simply photopea could have just never been found and became
| yet another thing to add to a GitHub resume that some hiring
| manager looks at and says "what's your _work_ experience? "
| veidr wrote:
| That, plus the fact that building your own shit, being your own
| boss, and making your own mark on the world is probably a lot
| cooler and more satisfying to most of us here than helping sell
| more ads or get people to watch even more TV.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Does FAANG let you delegate your time to other people. E.g. if
| I don't feel like coding today I can just hire someone to do it
| for me and collect my FAANG salary? Can I sell my job for a
| million when I'm fed up of it? No?
|
| Ok then running photopea is not comparable to a FAANG 9-5
| kristianc wrote:
| Kind of goes without saying also that 250k is going to go a lot
| further in the Czech Republic than it is in SF. 3000 EUR /
| month in Prague is going to get you a top end 2/3 bed
| apartment.
| onion2k wrote:
| Besides the fact that he might not want to, I suspect many
| FAANG companies aren't optimized for hiring developers capable
| of making something like Photopea. Very little about the hiring
| process at somewhere like Google or Facebook is about what you
| can make on your own.
|
| FAANGs hire for people who can make a small part of a larger
| whole incredibly well. That's mostly good for what they do,
| which often requires deep knowledge of specialist algorithms,
| but they miss out on hiring generalists who aren't necessarily
| good at the deep stuff but who can make lots of simple
| processes work well together. Which,in my opinion, is what you
| need to be a good front end developer.
| sida wrote:
| While I don't disagree with you (and want to start there).
|
| I just think photopea is far more than "generalists who
| aren't necessarily good at the deep stuff".
|
| I think Photopea is pretty complicated alogrithm wise too
| dagorenouf wrote:
| Also, for many people, making $100k as an indie is infinitely
| more satisfying than making the same cash working for a FAANG.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Right, but the problem is that you're way more unlikely to be
| making FAANG money outside FAANG.
| Silhouette wrote:
| I don't know how true that is, but I'm not sure it matters
| anyway. Money is nice, but job satisfaction is about much
| more than total compensation figures. Are you building
| something worthwhile, something that will help people to
| improve their lives in some way? Are you building something
| that is intellectually stimulating, facing challenges that
| you enjoy overcoming? Are you working in a comfortable
| environment, where you have positive interactions with
| pleasant colleagues? Is there a supportive culture, where
| you are respected as a contributor and trusted to make
| decisions according to your level of skill and experience?
| Is there a healthy work-life balance?
| dx034 wrote:
| Making enough money to live comfortably in a place you like
| is key. It doesn't matter how much it is, if you have family
| and friends in a low-cost area, even $30k can be more than
| enough. I believe most people are happier if they can choose
| where to live and can live there well rather than chasing the
| highest salary you can get in the world.
| rvz wrote:
| > I'd bet there are hundreds or thousands of genius programmers
| living in Russia, Brazil, the Balkans, Guatemala and many other
| countries that simply couldn't land a job at FAANG even if they
| wanted to.
|
| Maybe they know they are just too clever for FAANG companies
| and can do even better for themselves by starting their own
| businesses?
|
| We have to stop this constant submission to FAANG companies as
| 'the dream job' when in fact there are smaller companies out
| there that are just as good as they are and are also extremely
| profitable.
|
| I don't they are interested in the glory days of the 2010s
| which the FAANG companies were the talk of the town. Fast-
| forward 10 years, they are now under scrutiny by everyone and
| it's not looking good for them. It's time to find new and
| emerging companies that will define the 2020s or 2030s.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| > We have to stop this constant submission to FAANG companies
| as 'the dream job' when in fact their are smaller companies
| out there that are just as good as they are and are also
| extremely profitable.
|
| I agree! There's also highly profitable private software
| businesses that are bigger than Netflix. I work for one.
| While it doesn't pay nearly as well as FAANG, it does pay
| well, and is low-pressure / laid-back (I'm actually thinking
| about leaving not for better pay but for a faster-paced
| environment).
| m12k wrote:
| Another point is that he is now free to go out and get another
| job if he wants to, while still getting the ad money from
| Photopea every year. That's the whole point of building up a
| passive income stream - once you uncouple the income from
| actually working, you are then free to do whatever you want
| with your time - including selling it for a salary like most
| people so.
| odiroot wrote:
| > Some people simply live in underdeveloped countries where
| their talents can't shine and they have no way to get an
| interview at FAANG
|
| And there's a high chance they would be rejected for lack of
| culture fit anyway. Or fail one of the quirky whiteboard tests.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| At FAANG he'd be living in a place where 200+ is worth way
| less.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Yep, I also have the impression you need a lot more to land a
| job at a FAANG than to simply be an excellent programmer. The
| interview process at companies like Google can be pretty
| byzantine and hard to master without an internal "champion" I
| heard.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| A friend from Karachi, spent a few years in USA, landed a job
| in Amazon on his own, if he can do it, you can too.
| tiagod wrote:
| And some people, even if they have the chance to move to the US
| or some rich city where FAANG has engineering offices, would
| rather stay with their friends and family at the city they were
| born and make a lot less.
| f6v wrote:
| I don't intend to jump through all the hoops FAANG makes you.
| Some candidates spend more than one year to get ready for the
| whiteboard interview.
| freebuju wrote:
| I don't understand. Is it a cult you are joining?
| rijoja wrote:
| Eh I used to want to work for Google, but now I see it about as
| sexy as working for AT&T. Doing something like this gives you
| respect and freedom instead.
| matsemann wrote:
| Also, working for these FAANGs to get the high salary means
| moving to the US, which for many Europeans has become
| undesirable the later years.
| praptak wrote:
| You can get the high salary in Zurich, although if you're
| already in Zurich you'd be better off working in finance.
| Source: my colleague who moved to Google Zurich and then
| switched jobs to finance.
| chefkoch wrote:
| And zurich is even more expensive than every city in
| Germany.
| praptak wrote:
| Not surprising, given the strong financial sector whose
| employees you compete with. London is similar in this
| aspect.
|
| On the other hand the public transport is great, which
| means you don't have to live in the most expensive areas
| to have decent commute.
| hawk_ wrote:
| switched to finance as a software engineer or more
| trading_algo/quant engineer?
| praptak wrote:
| I think it's something close to SRE but don't quote me on
| that.
| franga2000 wrote:
| This 100x! Sure the salary might be great, but to give up
| all the comforts of a...you know...actually developed
| country? No thanks!
|
| I'd much rather work for a local software shop for a
| slightly above-averege salary in a country where the
| prospect of owning an apartment is more than a fantasy,
| where I won't go bankrupt if I have a serious medical
| issue, won't get shot by a raging idiot if I don't start
| moving at a red light fast enough, my hypothetical children
| can get excellent education without taking out predatory
| loans that will follow them for the rest of their life, not
| to mention the political system over there.....
| varjag wrote:
| I'm also a dev in Europe but this is ridiculous. You
| ain't going to die on the street of illness if you work
| at FAANG.
|
| Driving in Bay Area feels positively relaxed to many
| places in Europe too. Hell, even LA is a lot nicer place
| to drive than Rome.
| franga2000 wrote:
| True, I was definitely exaggerating, but the horror
| stories I hear from my american friends still make very
| skeptical that moving to the US for what would probably
| be a junior position at FAANG would be worth it in any
| way. Just the story of a friend of mine getting some
| basic dental surgery in the US makes me not even consider
| moving there.
| varjag wrote:
| At a FAANG you'd have healthcare and dental insurance
| plans co-sponsored by the employer, in addition to pretty
| humongous compensation that would easily cover your $50
| or so dental insurance contribution.
|
| Don't get me wrong there's plenty of folks who struggle
| in America, but white-collar employees of the top five
| tech megacorps ain't them.
| bradlys wrote:
| Even if you're not at FAANG, you're going to get pretty
| good care for very little cost at any funded startup.
| Almost every place I've worked I've never had to pay
| insurance premiums and almost always had obscenely low
| copays for visits and operations. (Visit a doctor - $10,
| surgery - $35... etc.. very cheap)
|
| Being a software engineer in the valley definitely means
| you'll likely have a pretty good healthcare situation
| that might be better than the free version you get in
| other countries...
| gbin wrote:
| Do you mean it is bad for their career if they go back in
| Europe or simply they usually don't like living in the US?
| aloisdg wrote:
| French here. No way I would leave a society who achieve
| 35 workweek, minimum wage, 25 days payed vacation and
| free healthcare. As a programmer I could win more in
| another country, but I dont want this money if people
| around me cant live a decent life. Even in France it is
| quite hard. I wont leave for a lesser country like the
| US. I want my nurse to be able to do a great work and it
| means having a good life.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Probably no reason to vilify the US as a 'lesser'
| country, everyone in the world has their struggles.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I think the reason it's viewed the way it is, is that
| it's actually a strange choice. If these problem happen
| in some random poor country that used to be a conquered
| colony, that makes more sence
| [deleted]
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Going to the USA has been my dream since being a teenager
| but that's not the case anymore.
|
| The USA has some good things going for it: VC money,
| great salaries, true freedom of speech (unlike the EU),
| right to bear arms (unlike most of the EU, where only
| robbers have guns and if you defend yourself you risk
| getting sued - tried on my skin), beautiful seaside,
| legal weed, less problems with immigrants (African
| immigration is a bomb waiting to explode, if it hasn't
| exploded already), place with good opportunity and enjoy
| a nice climate (in Europe the choice is between cold
| places with good work opportunity, aka UK, Switzerland or
| warm places with a barely functioning economy and
| ridiculously high taxes).
|
| Unfortunately health care is too expensive, taxes are as
| high as Europe (where is your freedom?), the food is
| subpar, mass shooting in schools, you have to drive way
| too much, a culture that is transitioning kids because
| they think they're the opposite gender.
|
| All in all, I think I'll stick with Europe for the time
| being and consider maybe South America or South East Asia
| in the future.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Why on earth would the right to bear guns be seen as a
| good thing? My mind boggles at this.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"legal weed"
|
| That would be Canada, not the US. Even though some US
| states allow it, the feds do not.
| dx034 wrote:
| Moving away from home is just not something many people
| want to do. I don't think many Americans would move to
| another country with different language and far away from
| their family, just because they'd get a higher salary.
| smoe wrote:
| Not GP, but besides career opportunities, the US is just
| not very appealing (anymore) to many. It is not even
| necessarily about things where you could objectively say
| something is better or worse, but personal preferences on
| how to live life.
|
| For me the biggest luxury of being a software engineer
| is, that pretty much wherever I go, I'm going to be
| solidly middle class within that region. So I can afford
| prioritizing other things over maximizing salary.
| e12e wrote:
| The US is seen as a bit of a backwards country; poor
| medical, technologically poor (banking, internet), little
| paid time off/vacation, no free/cheap higher education,
| rampant gun violence/domestic terror - on top of that you
| risk loosing some pension and health benefits in your
| "home" country if you stay abroad for years.
|
| Note that the point with a solid/free education system
| isn't that kids of rich SEs get free college - it's that
| society as a whole gets better education - and your kid's
| friends also have a future/access to education.
| igeligel_dev wrote:
| I can tell you it is a bit different. The visa is hard to
| obtain unfortunately, otherwise I think a lot more
| engineers would move, me included.
|
| The only real options are: - L-1 visa: Get
| into FAANG in Europe and try to transfer to the US. Lots of
| unknowns if you really get transferred and so on. L-1 to
| green card seems to be possible, best possibility for
| Europeans though - H-1B visa: Applying from abroad:
| Nearly no chance, sorry. You will have to schedule your
| applications to the end of the year to get into the lottery
| in March or so, and then it is pure luck. 30% chance from
| what I have heard + you have to rock the interviews hard
| and the company must be super-willing to wait for you
| - Study in the US. Do a masters degree there and be on
| Optional practical training (OPT) for up to a year/two
| years after graduation and hope your H-1B visa goes through
| in the meantime
|
| All these paths have kind of unknowns unfortunately and the
| path to permanent residency is even more strict. Or you
| just marry someone from the US.
| FpUser wrote:
| After quitting in 2000 I work on my own creating products,
| some under my ownership and some for clients. In average I do
| just fine, some years are good, some are not that good.
| However not once have I ever thought of trading my freedom to
| do as I please to some better paying job at FAANG or the
| likes.
| roninkoi wrote:
| Working at Bell Labs would have been great! :)
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I'm not sure it would even make much sense for them to work at
| a FAANG. Running a small entrepreneurial business is so
| different from succeeding in a large corporation. In one you
| need to be a master of everything from marketing through to
| development, in the other you are going to need to be highly
| specialised to merit a large income.
|
| My guess is he wouldn't want to work in a FAANG and they
| wouldn't want to hire him.
| jackTheMan wrote:
| I've worked for Amazon and all I had to do is getting
| permissions from teams and then do some config changes (or
| similar level programming) in their software.
|
| Needless to say year-by-year I forgot everything I've learned
| before. My CV might got a boost, but my skillset decreased a
| lot. Only thing what I've learned is politics and how to push
| and decorate an empty promo doc.
|
| I was a braindead when I finally got my stocks. So went back
| to the startup word, where I could thrive. The average
| lifespan was like 1 year there, most people did not even wait
| for the stock so basically worked cheap for amazon.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Reminds me of this
| https://mobile.twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768
|
| And many other similar stories
| o_p wrote:
| Its just shocking to think that wasting your talent into making
| people click more ads for some faceless corp can even be
| compared to creating something great like Photopea.
| [deleted]
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to
| make people click ads. That sucks.
|
| - Jeff Hammerbacher
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Worse than that - buy shit they don't need having been
| manipulated by big data. Google doesn't sell clicks it
| sells expected customer value.
| rchaud wrote:
| Google is absolutely selling clicks when an advertiser
| can perch their website on top of a search query for its
| competitor.
| sfifs wrote:
| Compared to the best mids of previous generations making
| things that would blast civilization back to stone age in
| matter of minutes, I'd say this is progress :-)
| Hiopl wrote:
| Except even the most destructive technologies have lead
| to incalculably valuable advancements for society. This
| is clearly a step back when we'd rather funnel our best
| minds into ads rather than things that could in a very
| real way help advance our civilization.
|
| We're going to regret this sooner than later.
| darkwater wrote:
| I hate ads too, but saying they are worse than nuclear
| weapons sounds just a bit too extreme... I mean, the
| information spreading helped by Google search was/is
| incalculably valuable for humanity.
| maury91 wrote:
| Nuclear weapons did lead to nuclear energy, and that is a
| benefit. They also lead to the end of WW2 and to the
| peace we are living now ( the reason super powers don't
| fight each other is that attacking each other with
| nuclear weapons will mean the end of everything ).
|
| I'm not sure what ads can give us...
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Hooray for progress! Instead of destruction of the world
| we merely have a mental addictive prison for everyone!
|
| Oh wait, we still have those nuclear weapons too!
| vmception wrote:
| > are thinking about how to make people click ads and
| complaining about people using their minds on
| cryptocurrency
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Quote should be modified to 'Some of the best minds'
| adventured wrote:
| It should be modified to: lies that ad tech people tell
| themselves so they feel better about what they do for a
| living. If you work in a terrible field doing terrible
| things, you can at least pretend you're really smart so
| it's not a total loss.
|
| Back in reality, very few of the best minds work in ad
| tech.
|
| That fraudulent quote should be challenged every time
| it's posted, until it finally dies.
| mam2 wrote:
| To make money, which is by all account a measure of
| usefulness in society.
|
| Using the best mind to improve trade is a good thing. Sorry
| if its not popular around herr but its true.
| Silhouette wrote:
| The trouble with this argument is that you're not
| starting with a level playing field. Other things being
| equal, work that produces more value might generate
| greater expected returns, but clearly in the real world
| other things are far from equal. There are opportunities
| available to those who already have money that are not
| available to everyone else, and consequently everyone
| else has to pay a premium, usually to the benefit of
| those who already had money. See also: most of the
| financial services sector, the standard arguments on the
| ethics of taxation to fund public services, etc.
| mam2 wrote:
| You think society is that worse now that it was before ?
| Silhouette wrote:
| Do I think society is worse than what, and in what
| way(s)?
| bennysomething wrote:
| I don't think this a waste of time. Adverts help businesses
| get their products to consumers. This pays people's wages. It
| aids wealth generation. Nothing bad about that.
| executesorder66 wrote:
| Ads also make sure that I add those businesses to my mental
| blacklist and never want to interact with them again. This
| affects peoples wages. It aids wealth destruction. Nothing
| good about that.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Did consumers need those products? Would they have bought
| the same thing but from a different company? If not, would
| they iblnstead put this money into savings for a rainy day?
| Would they save for a house? Wouod we have less homeless
| and vulnerable people?
|
| Would the clever people working on ads and manipulating
| consumers actually pursue careers like chemical enginerting
| which solves fundamental problems of human civilisation?
| sokoloff wrote:
| If everyone saved money in a world where ads didn't
| exist, do you think housing wouldn't be bid up by virtue
| of many people having extra money to spend?
|
| I hate what web ads have become, but I'm pretty sure
| they're not a significant driver of homelessness.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Sure, i am not claiming without ads we will not have
| homeless people
|
| I am asking whether we have any proof that the
| advertising i dustry contributes anything substantial to
| the real economy, or we would be better off if these
| people were doing something else
| loceng wrote:
| If you keep the consequences and scope of view so narrow
| like that, sure, that is a single positive that isn't
| weighing it at all with any of the negatives.
| 55555 wrote:
| Perhaps an odd thing to say considering Photopea is monetized
| by ads.
| 1_player wrote:
| No. Making use of ads to support your creation is much
| different than being paid to work on ad technology itself.
| Jyaif wrote:
| Ad technology is what enables products like Photopea to
| exist in the first place.
| ruined wrote:
| ad technology admittedly provides a possibility for
| monetization, which can justify something to an
| accountant, but it is completely perpendicular to use-
| value and technical feasibility. it does not "enable"
| anything to exist.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| People were making things before advertisers tried to
| pretend nothing else could exist without them, and will
| continue to do so long after advertisers are gone.
| katzgrau wrote:
| > long after advertisers are gone
|
| May have sounded nice, but successful creators eventually
| become advertisers. As long as they have money to spend
| on marketing, they'll spend it to get in front of the
| right people
| yarcob wrote:
| Photopea could just as well be monetized by selling
| licenses or by non-intrusive unpersonalized ads. When you
| have a great product making money from it isn't hard.
|
| I think that 90% of ad tech is useless shit technology
| that just exists to take a cut of the money, without
| actually providing much of a value to anyone.
|
| It's like realtors or financial advisors or other
| middlemen like that. The main reason for them being there
| is that it's a very profitable business to get a cut of
| somebody else's transactions.
| Closi wrote:
| TV shows are also monetized by ads, but we don't ask
| talented show writers why they are wasting their time
| writing episodes when they could be spending their efforts
| towards creating better ads for washing up detergent.
|
| If the developer of Photopea went to work on advert
| technology what would happen? The world would loose this
| great piece of software, one of the worlds richest
| advertising companies _might_ get _imperceptibly_ better at
| targeting ads, and the creator has to stop working on his
| own pet project which he is doing on his own terms and work
| on whatever his boss tells him to. Besides, if he achieves
| his goal of becoming one of the most popular image editors
| in the world, there is a good chance Photopea will be much
| more valuable than he will have earned as a salary at
| FAANG.
| csomar wrote:
| Since he has a paid version that doesn't seem to make much
| money, my guess is that he is not making _that_ much from
| ads. Probably just enough for me.
| Normille wrote:
| I don't use Photopea enough to justify paying for it. I
| already own Photoshop and only very occasionally fire up
| Photopea when I need to make a trivial edit to an image for
| posting online, or suchlike when I can't be arsed waiting
| for Photoshop to launch.
|
| And, since I have an almost pathological hatred of adverts,
| I block them and use Stylebot to remove the space where
| they'd be.
|
| But I'm glad the dev is making a decent living from what
| I've previously described as probably the most impressive
| web app I've ever seen. He deserves rewarded for his work
| but I'm sorry, I'm _NEVER_ even looking at --never mind
| 'clicking on'-- a single advert while using the web, if I
| can possibly help it.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Regarding not being able to work at a faang: Don't forget
| social anxiety where your mind blanks when they put you in
| front of a white board.
|
| Or also simply not being a cultural fit. What if you're a
| republican?
| rospaya wrote:
| > I'd bet there are hundreds or thousands of genius programmers
| living in Russia, Brazil, the Balkans, Guatemala and many other
| countries that simply couldn't land a job at FAANG even if they
| wanted to.
|
| I could make more money as a waiter in Germany or Austria than
| in my devops job in the Balkans, but a) money isn't always the
| main motivation, especially in Europe and b) the same amount of
| money goes a lot further than in Silicon Valley.
|
| It's not that comparable.
| high_byte wrote:
| my issue is with that comment assuming Photopea is full-time
| job. maybe it is idk, but maybe it isn't and he can still work
| a day job and this is a side business. regardless of FAANG ofc.
| Teracotage wrote:
| He reminds me of the oldie irfanview.com from the 90s.
| [deleted]
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| Indeed, it sort of assumes that working at FAANG with a pension
| plan and 200k+ is what the author should be striving for (the
| objectively better option), and I'm not sure if that's
| accurate.
|
| While there are obvious benefits to FAANGing, there's also a
| lot to be said for working for a smaller team, or even
| yourself. Money isn't the soul (or even main) motivator for a
| lot of people.
| tehlike wrote:
| There is no pension. There is 401k.
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| Depends where you are. In the UK and much of the EU it's a
| pension, as far as I know.
|
| Either way, isn't this mostly semantics? My point is that
| one persons priorities doesn't necessarily match with
| another's.
| tehlike wrote:
| Fair.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Some countries call what Americans call a "401k" a
| "pension".
|
| Americans use "pension" as short for "defined benefit
| pension", meaning you are owed some amount of money every
| month after the retirement age, and it's up to the
| employer to do whatever needs to be done to provide it.
|
| Americans use "401k" or "IRA" to refer to a defined
| contribution pension, one where the employer (and
| employee) contributes a certain amount into an account
| that is withdrawn from after retirement. However, the
| amount the employee can withdraw is subject to however
| much is in the account when they retire and however much
| the employee wants to periodically withdraw, so there is
| no definite benefit amount.
|
| I have British family that refer to the latter as a
| pension, but we would not in the US. I would be surprised
| if any modern tech company offers a defined benefit
| pension anymore, even in UK/Europe.
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| TIL! Thanks for the explainer.
| luch wrote:
| Not even underdeveloped countries, I live in a G8 country and
| there is hardly any significant FAANG shop here.
|
| For example if you want to work for Google in Europe it's
| either UK or Switzerland, which are interestingly the two
| developed european countries outside of the EU :)
| kristianc wrote:
| Google has a Dublin office too, as do many others.
| dx034 wrote:
| But they pay Irish salaries there, not Bay Area salaries.
| Which is fine, FAANG developers in Ireland are still doing
| well. And not everyone wants to live in the bay area, just
| like not everyone wants to live in Ireland, Germany or any
| other place.
| croes wrote:
| I guess for privacy related issues.
| kristianc wrote:
| At least in part for tax related reasons.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/11/03/
| ire...
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Taxation wise too [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/apple-s-cash-
| mountain-ho...
| sofixa wrote:
| > For example if you want to work for Google in Europe it's
| either UK or Switzerland, which are interestingly the two
| developed european countries outside of the EU
|
| Or Ireland, or France, or Belgium.
| knolan wrote:
| Lots of them have a presence in Ireland too.
| [deleted]
| secfirstmd wrote:
| Yeh and there's are crazy amount of hiring here at the
| moment. FB, Amazon, TikTok, Stripe, Google, Apple,
| Microsoft, Salesforces (amongst others) all hiring from
| Hundreds to a few thousand
| Normille wrote:
| Yes. Ireland seems to be pretty much basing its entire
| economy, at the moment, on attracting huge American
| megacorps to set up shop in Dublin. Rather than actually
| investing in producing anything themselves.
|
| It's a recipe for disaster. As will become apparent when
| some other equally strategically placed jurisdiction
| starts offering even more enticing tax-breaks and the
| megacorps up sticks and decamp there instead. Then the
| whole house of cards [and with it most of the Irish
| economy] will come tumbling down.
|
| What a pathetic pathetic country!
|
| [and I say that as a terminally embarrassed Irishman]
| Silhouette wrote:
| _It 's a recipe for disaster. As will become apparent
| when some other equally strategically placed jurisdiction
| starts offering even more enticing tax-breaks and the
| megacorps up sticks and decamp there instead._
|
| At the moment, if I were the Irish government, I think
| I'd be more concerned with the likelihood of genuine
| international collaboration on business taxes than any
| single rival nation setting up a more favourable tax
| regime. Even the Biden administration now seems to be
| acknowledging that this may be the way forward with the
| need for governments to make up unprecedented economic
| damage from the pandemic, and if the US moves that way,
| there is political cover and financial incentive for
| other governments in the developed world to move that way
| too.
| varjag wrote:
| FAANG branches in Europe are just like other bigcorps. Their
| pay rates are good but not outliers in any way.
| dx034 wrote:
| Because in the Bay Area they also pay standard rates. Stock
| comp has been very supportive over the past years but base
| salary mostly reflects high living costs. Developers in
| Europe are still paid well compared to median income. The
| 80-90kEUR that were mentioned in another comment here are
| an excellent salary in Germany. And if you're in the top
| 10% of your country, it doesn't matter how big that number
| is unless you want to take your savings to move somewhere
| else in the future.
|
| For many people staying close to the place they grew up and
| their family is important. If you get a well-paid job there
| it can be more attractive than moving halfway around the
| world for more money.
| varjag wrote:
| No, with FAAG in Bay Area you can easily have 2x-3x the
| median national rate for developers.
|
| And there are numerous places in Germany and Northern
| Europe where an experienced developer can command
| EUR80-90k.
|
| Consider that a senior position at Amazon Berlin wich
| lists EUR80-100K range would be more towards EUR300k in
| Bay Area.
| sildur wrote:
| > Some people simply live in underdeveloped countries where
| their talents can't shine and they have no way to get an
| interview at FAANG
|
| Some other people would consider morally reprehensible to be
| accomplices of FAANG. I wouldn't work for them even if I could.
| It would be like working for Fox News.
| benja123 wrote:
| Also there are plenty of excellent programmers that could, but
| choose not to work in a FAANG for a number of reasons.
|
| In Ivan's case he has clearly achieved success and financial
| freedom on his own terms, so kudos to him.
|
| Many of us would love to be able to do that, even if it meant
| taking a pay cut.
| mrisoli wrote:
| Not sure what it's like these days but back when I starting
| university Google had just acquired a local company and setup
| their first Latin America office in my hometown(Belo
| Horizonte), salaries were probably a fraction of its SV
| counterpart but they were still 5-10x higher than just about
| any other company in the region. It was notoriously difficult
| to get in, only way to get an interview was to either have a
| phd or a masters with an impressive resume, even then you
| probably needed some connection to refer you.
|
| Honestly I hoped their presence would help push local companies
| to up their game and drive salaries up for developers in a low
| wage market, unfortunately that is yet to happen 15 years
| later.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Also why would a talented programmer or a true hacker want to
| work for FAANG. The pirate mentality of not working for a big
| box corpo seems to have faded.
| elric wrote:
| I don't know what it's like in other countries, but here in
| Belgium, if you want compensation that is anywhere near FAANG
| levels, you have to go the freelance route and charge high day
| rates. Then we'd have to be talking rates of 1000eur/day or
| more, which is extremely rare. And if you didn't incorporate,
| you'll be taking home less than 500eur/day. Which is still
| three times more than what the average SE employee gets to take
| home. But it's a far cry from US FAANG levels.
| sebastiangraef wrote:
| He is also building an asset which he can sell.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| Hi guys, I am Ivan, the creator of Photopea :)
|
| I made almost $1 million in the last 12 months, 90% from ads.
| The rest is from Premium (users paying to hide ads) and
| licensing a self-hosted version of Photopea.
|
| When you start your own project, you never know, if it will
| ever make $250k a year. But if you get hired, you can be quite
| sure, that you will never make more than $250k a year.
|
| Follow Photopea to see my progress :)
| http://facebook.com/photopea , http://twitter.com/photopeacom
| smallnamespace wrote:
| > But if you get hired, you can be quite sure, that you will
| never make more than $250k a year.
|
| From https://www.levels.fyi/
|
| Google (total comp):
|
| Level 4 - $266k
|
| Level 5 (Senior) - $353k
|
| Level 6 (Staff) - $484k
|
| ... and similarly at other FAANG companies.
|
| If you're good/lucky, you can make it to Senior in 3-4 years
| as a new engineer.
|
| It used to be that Level 5 -> 6 was a difficult jump, but
| nowadays there are many Level 6s and 7s. At Level 7, even
| your base salary >$250k a year.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I would be curious to know how many engineers are at senior
| level or higher at google.
| system16 wrote:
| I'm not a designer, but for my personal dev projects I always
| end up needing to do some light image editing. Not nearly
| enough to justify a Photoshop licence, and I've tried other
| apps like Pixen and GIMP but have always been met with
| frustration.
|
| Photopea is one of my favourite tools on the web. Thank you
| for making such awesome software.
|
| As for the comment about working at a FAANG I'm baffled. In
| what world would working at a FAANG, dealing with company
| politics, reporting to managers, having employment reviews,
| etc. be more desirable than the freedom and satisfaction of
| launching your own project and being able to very comfortably
| sustain yourself?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| In the world where for every PhotoPea there's a hundred
| other failed ideas that never materialised; to consider the
| idea of "just create your own product" being simpler than
| dealing with office politics sounds laughable either
| because you are not aware of how difficult the former
| proposition is to a regular engineer. If it comes so
| naturally to you, it still sounds immature to not realise
| how rare such an ability is.
| cmmeur01 wrote:
| They are talking about using PhotoPea as leverage to work
| at a FAANG. This doesn't apply, his project is already
| successful.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| You seem to be basing that question on the assumption that
| both options offer the same pay (or at least that both off
| "enough" pay). Working on your own project is a tremendous
| risk; and for every success story like this, my assumption
| is that there's at least dozens who fail or don't even make
| enough to pay their bills.
|
| Working on a successful independent software project is,
| for a lot of people, much more desirable than working at
| someone else's company; in much the same way owning a
| startup company would be. But the key there is
| "successful", which is certainly not guaranteed.
| system16 wrote:
| You seem to be basing it on the assumption that Ivan
| would be able to invert a binary tree on a whiteboard and
| get into said FAANG. I'm only half-kidding.
| nickjj wrote:
| Hey, I've used Photopea a bunch of times to help create
| thumbnail images, nice app!
|
| If you ever wanted to jump on a podcast to talk about how you
| built and deploy it let me know. I'd love to have you on the
| https://runninginproduction.com/ podcast. You can click the
| "become a guest" button to get started if you were
| interested.
|
| (Note: if anyone else wants to be a guest you can submit a
| request too, I just finished a huge stretch of 8 months worth
| of backlog episodes so I have openings again)
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| Congratulations! I think your story is very inspiring and I
| wish you and Photopea lots more success in the future!
| nakodari wrote:
| Congrats Ivan! Great looking app. Quick question - is this $1
| million revenue from Ads alone or does it include
| subscription as well?
| cinntaile wrote:
| His comment, that you're replying to, literally says 90% of
| the $1 million usd revenue comes from ads. The rest, so 10%
| of $1 million, comes from subscriptions and so on.
| secondcoming wrote:
| deleted
| techrat wrote:
| >Edit: I just checked our systems and you're mainly XXXXX.
| We've given you XXXXX since the start of the year (before
| the ad network takes their cut)
|
| Are you even allowed to release customer/client info like
| that?
| codegrappler wrote:
| You should probably delete the quoted portion of your
| comment as well.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Maybe not! Can you edit my comment? I've removed mine.
| He's not a client though.
|
| Edit: thank you!
| bijant wrote:
| It's more than just a bit unprofessional to disclose the
| earnings of a client on a public forum. (I take that back
| if he has given You explicit permission)
| [deleted]
| dx034 wrote:
| Congrats! It's an amazing story that shows that a sole
| developer can create a product on par with paid products from
| big companies. I think many people assume you always need a
| big team to create something great, whereas often a sole
| developer with dedication and talent is enough to challenge
| even large products.
| bennysomething wrote:
| Plus you now don't have to work full time on it, presumably.
| Financial freedom Vs corporate job. I know which one I'd
| prefer. Also congratulations on your outstanding success
| techrat wrote:
| Ever considered having a completely offline version for those
| who don't want to run it with their browser?
| IvanK_net wrote:
| It would take me some effort to make and maintain a
| separate version. Users would report bugs which have been
| fixed months ago, because they did not update it, etc.
|
| I think the importance of "offline apps" is overrated
| today. Personally, I spend less than 10 hours a year on a
| device without internet, and I think this number is
| decreasing each year, for everyone.
|
| People use Google Maps and Wikipedia without having them on
| their hard drives. On the other hand, it is nice, that you
| can simply close a website and there is no track of that
| service in your computer.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Maybe a Progressive Web App could work? If I remember
| correctly, it requires basically just adding a cache
| manifest.
|
| Initial setup can be finnicky (test it on a separate
| subdomain!) but it shouldn't require much more than a
| correctly configured cache manifest and a few lines of
| code to handle updates.
| FpUser wrote:
| Why bother. He already has very nice product and makes
| very nice money.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| there are even some frameworks that make it extra easy,
| like angular for example (just `ng add @angular/pwa` and
| you're basically done).
|
| while it is pretty easy and doable in maybe 1-2 days,
| depending on how fluent you are with these kinds of
| things... it's not entirely in the authors best interest.
| if people start using it `offline`, he wont be able to
| get advertisement revenue after all ;)
| bckr wrote:
| He says in one of his Reddit comments that he does not
| (and probably will not) use frameworks. It's pure
| HTML/CSS/JS.
| jannes wrote:
| Careful! You can get users stuck on an old version if you
| configure it incorrectly
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Doesn't deleting the manifest solve that? I thought
| serving a 404 for it makes browsers delete their cache
| exactly to provide a way out of this trap.
|
| But yes, this is why I suggested testing with a separate
| subdomain.
| bardonadam wrote:
| Congrats Ivan! Well deserved! I've always enjoyed your AMA's
| on Reddit.
| grumpyautist wrote:
| What makes your product unique or better than GIMP?
| shoto_io wrote:
| Have you looked at it? For me at least, GIMP never worked
| really stable on my Mac.
| Black101 wrote:
| The Filter menu looks a bit funky to me (edit: in Firefox
| 87): https://i.imgur.com/S70o2eU.png ... probably one of
| my addons messing with it but I don't have that problem
| in GIMP.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| Your browser is probably too old, or you use some
| "exotic" browser extensions
| Black101 wrote:
| Whatever the reason is, it is not working right and Gimp
| is, for me.
| [deleted]
| himujjal wrote:
| better than a software that doesnt do what users want it to
| do? a lot of things. Why dont you go and try Photopea. It
| has achieved so much what Gimp couldnt. Yes, its made for
| business and its closed source. But considering the number
| of devs and the number of years spent, Photopea is an
| excellent replacement for photoshop. I have personally used
| it for most of the small image editing I needed.
| nguyenkien wrote:
| You don't need to install it. It's huge plus for me
| CynicusRex wrote:
| Since I come from Photoshop, GIMP always has a way of
| pissing me off by doing something unexpected or making
| something trivial needlessly complicated.
|
| While I congratulate its developers for not using ads and
| making it free, it remains a pain to use sometimes. I
| mainly use it for cropping, resizing, and image blurring,
| but for anything else I use Photopea.
|
| That being said, if I took the time to properly learn to
| utilize GIMP through tutorials, as I did with Photoshop
| back in the day, I wouldn't be surprised if my opinion does
| a 180.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| It works on any machine, including Chromebooks, without
| installation.
|
| I also find it more user friendly (unlike GIMP where I
| constantly feel like I'm fighting the bad UX instead of
| actually doing what I came to do), especially if you're
| used to Photoshop.
| matsemann wrote:
| The UX. At least for me familiar with PS that just needs to
| do quick edits it's very nice.
| dmje wrote:
| This. The toolbars / tools are basically where
| PhotoShops' are so you don't have to think terribly hard
| if you're used to them
| nickjj wrote:
| IMO it's general usability.
|
| For example a very common thing you might want to do is add
| text (or any other layer) on top of an image and then
| center that text / layer either vertically or horizontally
| relative to the image.
|
| In Photopea you create a text layer and then drag it near
| the middle and it'll show you guidelines when you're close
| and then snap into the perfect center (either vertically,
| horizontally or both). It takes like 2 seconds and feels
| intuitive.
|
| In GIMP you have to make sure you switch to the alignment
| tool which is hidden by default so you need to remember to
| hit Q to activate it or hover over the move tool and select
| it but if you hit Q you better make sure you're not in any
| text input because it'll insert "Q" instead of switching
| your tool, but since you're adding text chances are you
| will be so you need to remember to click away. Then you
| need make sure you click an active area of your text layer
| and click the align horizontal icon, then you need to click
| the align vertical icon. Then if you decide you want to
| change your text you have to repeat this whole process
| again.
|
| Another example is adding a simple stroke (line) around
| some text or other layer effects that Photoshop has had for
| over 10+ years.
|
| In Photopea, you open up layer styles, pick the stroke
| option and can tweak the colors and thickness very quickly.
| After applying the style you can change and move around
| your text and the styles are applied to it automatically,
| it feels intuitive to use.
|
| In GIMP I spent an hour researching plugins to add this
| behavior and after picking one it technically works but the
| user experience is pretty hostile. It creates the stroke as
| a separate layer so you can't move your text and the stroke
| together unless you remember to link them, and if you
| decide to change your text content or size you have to
| delete the old stroke layer and make a new one.
|
| GIMP is really good in terms of what it can do but using it
| feels like death by a thousand paper cuts because you need
| to do so many steps to accomplish what feels like basic
| things that other editors have had for years when it comes
| to user friendly features.
|
| I understand creating a highly polished image editor isn't
| easy and honestly if I knew their code base I would open a
| PR for the snap to center guidelines but at this point I
| have to imagine if they wanted to add that feature it would
| have been added. From the outside it feels like it hasn't
| been added because they don't want that feature, but as an
| end user that makes me wonder why. It's such a useful
| thing.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| My standard example for "GIMP is unusable" is "try to
| draw a straight line" which I had to find a tutorial for
| (you need to hold some magic keys). That said, I
| struggled with that in Photopea too (not realizing my
| intended red line was there, just hidden by the blue
| vector indicator).
| grumpyautist wrote:
| Hold shift? It's not hard
| Pimpus wrote:
| This kind of attitude in OSS is exactly why GIMP is a
| piece of garbage that no one uses.
| easrng wrote:
| I get that but hold shift for constraints is standard in
| almost every editor out there. (Not sure about Photoshop,
| it has weird behaviors for modifier keys.) Also, I find
| GIMP more intuitive for some things. For example, making
| solid-color backgrounds transparent is very easy in GIMP
| but as far as I can tell impossible in Photoshop.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I'm not talking about constraining a line to a 90 degree
| angle. I'm talking about "draw a single straight line
| from one point to another". Most editors have a dedicated
| tool for that. In Gimp, you take the brush, then shift-
| click start and end.
|
| How do you do the solid color background in Gimp? In
| Photoshop, I'd select the background with the magic wand
| (contiguous or non-contiguous, depending on preference),
| potentially use one of those edge-improving tools, then
| either press delete or create a mask. It apparently also
| has a special tool for it that I haven't used before but
| seems to do basically that.
| easrng wrote:
| Oh, OK. Regarding the background: That works, and you do
| the same thing in GIMP but that doesn't handle
| transparency. In GIMP there's the Color to Alpha tool
| which is pretty much magic.
| easrng wrote:
| Say you have https://this.is-a-professional-
| domain.com/4Hhtqcf.jpg and you want that glow on a
| transparent background. In GIMP, I'd select the chip,
| Select>Invert, Color>Color to Alpha and it would just
| work. I tried to do it in Photoshop and couldn't figure
| it out.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| BTW. I added Color to Alpha into Photopea: Filter - More
| - Color to Alpha. Works 100% same as in Gimp :)
| canada_dry wrote:
| Gimp has made some usability improvements, but I agree it
| is still painful to use.
|
| When Blender finally bit-the-bullet and overhauled their
| UI - in a way that more aligned itself with how other
| keys/clicks worked in similar tools - it totally
| relaunched itself and is now so much easier to use.
|
| It would be great it Gimp (and inkscape) did a similar
| overhaul IMHO.
| grumpyautist wrote:
| That's not how to align text on gimp. The text tool has
| an alignment feature. It aligns the text within the text
| box
|
| Outlining text is easy too. true, there isn't a magic
| text outline button, you must use the same method you
| would use to outline any arbitrary object.
|
| The sum of your complaints are because you know how to do
| it in PS. I am a professional graphics designer and
| artist and I use gimp exclusively.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| What's the point of asking if you're just going to
| dismiss the answers?
|
| I used to use The GIMP exclusively, but I jumped to
| Photoshop when I could afford it, due to GIMP's poor UX
| and adjustment layers (which have been "coming soon" with
| GEGL since 2008).
| nickjj wrote:
| > That's not how to align text on gimp. The text tool has
| an alignment feature. It aligns the text within the text
| box
|
| I'm talking about horizontally or vertically aligning a
| layer relative to the image, not the text within the
| rectangle bounding box of the text input box when you
| have the text tool activated.
|
| It's such a common use case to want to take a layer
| (whether or not it's text isn't important) and center it
| horizontally or vertically relative to the entire image
| or another object.
| grumpyautist wrote:
| So, you draw the text box in the size and position you
| need? All of these "features" sound like training wheels
| for graphic designers. It's not hard whatsoever to
| accomplish, and assuredly not worth paying monthly for.
| If you know in general how to edit graphics the tool you
| use is irrelevant
| nickjj wrote:
| > So, you draw the text box in the size and position you
| need?
|
| I'm not sure what you mean.
|
| If you have a 1000 x 1000 image I'd like to put the text
| "Hello" exactly in the middle of the image, both
| vertically and horizontally and let the tool determine
| the exact bounding box of the text input based on how
| much text I have.
|
| > All of these "features" sound like training wheels for
| graphic designers.
|
| In GIMP I described the workflow how to do that using the
| alignment tool. I also described for comparison how to do
| it in Photopea because it only involves dragging the
| layer near where it should be and it auto-snaps to
| perfect center with guidelines that appear when you're
| close.
|
| This isn't a training wheels feature because both casual
| and professional graphic designers aren't eyeballing a
| pixel perfection alignment every time without thinking,
| but Photopea gives you this outcome with the least amount
| of effort you can ask for and its accuracy is 100%.
|
| > It's not hard whatsoever to accomplish, and assuredly
| not worth paying monthly for.
|
| There's a difference between hard and convenient.
| Executing a checklist of steps isn't hard but it sure is
| inconvenient if I need to do that every time I want to
| align something. It's the difference between something
| having a good / intuitive UI vs not.
| dwild wrote:
| > The sum of your complaints are because you know how to
| do it in PS.
|
| Or PS is just more intuitive than GIMP.
|
| > I am a professional graphics designer
|
| Once you are using a tool professionally, I guess that
| intuitiveness is no longer a selling point. It is though
| for someone that only use it from time to time...
| jfrunyon wrote:
| If I'm doing my math right, $900,000 from ads @ few dollars
| CPM = few hundred million impressions - not bad!
| xNeil wrote:
| https://www.similarweb.com/website/photopea.com/#overview
|
| SimilarWeb says the website has had 8 million visits in the
| past 6 months. His CPM must be very, very high.
| hackonr wrote:
| How does SimilarWeb obtain this data?
| krmmalik wrote:
| All I want is a worthy alternative to Adobe After Effects. We
| have decent alternatives for the rest of the Adobe suite already.
| Davinci Resolve Fusion isn't quite up to the task just yet.
| Jowsey wrote:
| Absolutely second this. Would love some better competition in
| this space. Especially something that plays nicely with Linux.
| busymom0 wrote:
| The developer did a AMA 2 years ago which covers a lot of
| questions posted on this post (from 8 months ago):
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9urjmg/i_made_a_free_...
|
| > I was contacted by one of developers of Adobe XD, to coordinate
| me about the development of the XD format (which is very new and
| still in development, but I implemented it into Photopea). I am
| trying to compete with all photo editors, but Adobe Photoshop is
| the most popular one today (that is why I worked so hard on
| supporting PSD files).
|
| I have used Photopea for about 2 years now after I got introduced
| to it from the reddit AMA. Used to use Photoshop for created App
| Store screenshots for my app, then I upgraded my Mac and my old
| Photoshop wasn't supported on the new MacOS (64 bit stuff if I
| remember right) and I didn't want to shell money on a new
| license. Photopea was a convenient choice considering I don't
| have to install anything on my Mac plus it loads much faster (if
| browser caches) than Photoshop itself.
|
| Few examples of the App Store screenshots for my Hacker News app
| HACK:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...
| trinovantes wrote:
| The only thing that baffles me is how he was be able to get his
| adsense account approved. Anytime I try to apply for one for one
| of my SPA web apps, I get declined due to "lack of content".
| jamescontrol wrote:
| My guess is that if you have enough traffic, they will probably
| bend the requirements.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's also that they've become a lot more strict on that rule
| over the years (which doesn't even make sense, since google
| doesn't do contextual ads anymore)
| macando wrote:
| I used it a few times for some quick photo edits.
|
| Along with Figma one of the brightest examples of how browser
| apps can be slick, performant and powerful.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Anyone able to explain how Adobe never took legal action against
| this product? I always thought that the UI was so similar as to
| be over the line in terms of copycat. But then IANAL so perhaps
| that's legal.
| busymom0 wrote:
| The developer answered similar questions on this reddit AMA:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9urjmg/i_made_a_free_...
| wideareanetwork wrote:
| Copying look and feel of software was fought out in the courts
| by Apple and Microsoft a very long time ago. It's allowed.
| [deleted]
| Ciantic wrote:
| How about in Czech Republic, or EU courts? There is always a
| way for big companies to fight small ones.
|
| Of course one way to defend that would be to have the company
| be US based or with founding US partners.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| They could try to bog down photopea in permanent lawsuits,
| but that would risk some EFF-style organization taking the
| other side, and now they're fighting an equal opponent,
| earning a lot of bad PR, and most importantly, they're
| providing a lot of cheap advertising for the competing
| product while also making themselves unpopular.
| rijoja wrote:
| Usually by buying them. If not that by hiring 10x the
| amounts of the coders and copy whatever that did and then
| launch a massive PR campaign.
| Ciantic wrote:
| I have used Photopea somewhat, but I have thought this is
| temporary as it's not open source. How long this will be
| available? If Adobe targets this, it wouldn't be a surprising to
| see this being bought off and killed.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| Hi, I am the creator of Photopea :) Photopea exists since 2013.
|
| 1. Nobody can buy Photopea, if I refuse to sell it.
|
| 2. I am not aware of using a work of someone else, or a unique
| idea of someone else. I would not be able to live in a world,
| where I am constantly scared, that someone more powerful can
| put me in jail, just because they have more money for lawyers.
| I hope our world is not like that, and if it is, I am ready to
| fight to change it.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Unfortunately, it won't be easy to defend lawsuit from adobe. I
| don't see how it'll survive unless Microsoft or Facebook buy
| it.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I think the most amazing is that it s made with pure javascript ,
| no need to learn any frameworks and the myriad of things around
| them. Maybe even i do know javascript after all...
| [deleted]
| Jyaif wrote:
| He estimates that he's missing out on 10% to 40% of revenue due
| to ad blockers.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Or from people who won't purchase anyway. If I need something,
| I'll look it up. "Suggesting" I purchase something just doesn't
| work for me. Ads are blocked on my machines primarily for
| aesthetics, then lack of use.
| comprev wrote:
| He'll still get ad display revenue even if the viewers don't
| purchase anything.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| "the free alternative to Photoshop"
|
| Something tells me I'm by far not the only one who has heard of
| Photoshop, and GIMP, but not Photopea.
| shajid wrote:
| I use Photopea a lot and the amount of Photoshop features it has
| is astounding. Like adjustment layers, smart objects etc. The
| PSDs it exports work nicely with the Photoshop I have in my
| Windows PC. This is just mind-blowing. That brings me to a
| question I have. GIMP has been in development for longer time.
| And supposedly it has a bigger team behind it. So how come GIMP
| is missing a lot of nice features like non-destructive editing,
| layer styles etc? I saw some of these features in its roadmap,
| but why is its development so slow? Is it only because working on
| GIMP doesn't generate any money?
|
| Edit: rephrase
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| GIMP is OSS and doesn't pay the bills. I'm sure much more man-
| hours went into Photopea (even with a single contributor) than
| in GIMP and the [ad revenue / promise of passive income] is
| what allowed that.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Highly unlikely. Just the work on upgrades to newer versions
| of libraries should be more man-hours than what a single guy
| can achieve
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I suspect a lot more work went into GIMP, but a) the overhead
| of many small contributors ate a lot of it, b) the overhead
| of an ancient code base, having to interface with OS level
| GUI libraries etc. ate a lot more c) GIMP got a lot of
| development for features but not enough UX work.
|
| Totally agree that the ads paying the bills is what enabled
| Photopea to become so good in the end.
| bambax wrote:
| He says somewhere that 20-25% of users of Photopea are from
| India. This sounded surprising, and then I remembered that so
| many photo-editing services are based in India (search for "photo
| clipping service" for instance).
|
| Many of them probably use Photopea, a much cheaper alternative to
| buying huge numbers of CC subscriptions...
|
| There is something hilarious in the fact that image editing farms
| in India, whose clients come from all over the world, use a Web
| app made by one guy in the Czech Republic.
|
| Another interesting fact is that those farms get most of their
| business from Google ads, and the maker of Photopea in turn makes
| most of his money from ads.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| What I find more amazing is what an incredible equalizer IT is:
| An individual with nothing more than a computer (and $50 worth of
| rented production infrastructure) plus the right skills can build
| a project that makes a (well-deserved) million a year, from
| anywhere in the world.
|
| It also shows the power of smart design and keeping as much as
| you can client side. Attempting to move any of the actual work to
| the server side would create an unsustainable amount of a)
| additional development work, b) infrastructure cost, c)
| infrastructure operations work. It's also a great example that
| you truly can do everything inside a browser nowadays.
|
| Regarding the incredulous people who can't imagine how 12
| TB/month cost only $50, the hosting provider may be taking a
| small loss on it, and make it up with other customers. At
| Hetzner, extra bandwidth (after you've exhausted your included
| allocation) retails for 1 EUR/TB + VAT. A provider can afford to
| lose $10-20/month on a single customer, and kicking them out is
| probably not worth the effort and the risk of even the smallest
| amount of bad press/word-of-mouth.
| yosito wrote:
| It's the "plus the right skills" part that makes it not
| actually an equalizer. No one is born with the skills to write
| amazing software. It takes a lot of hard work to learn those
| skills, and in order to do that hard work you need to have the
| available time and resources both to study/practice and to meet
| your material needs (and the material needs of anyone who
| depends on you) in the meantime. Not to mention that it's not
| just the skill of programming, there are a hundred other
| prerequisite skills that can't be taken for granted either, a
| big one of which is language skills. If English isn't your
| first language, you're starting way behind.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Yes, you need free time, and either having English skills,
| learning English skills, or knowing another language that has
| good documentation is important.
|
| But it's still a far shot from needing a tens of millions of
| dollars to build a factory, or even tens of thousands to buy
| some basic equipment for some smaller business that doesn't
| have the potential to get anywhere nearly as big.
| bluecalm wrote:
| It's still more accessible than anything else. You need a
| computer with an internet connection and time. That's it.
| English is the easiest language to learn as well. Not because
| of its structure or vocabulary mind you but because it's very
| easy to get constant exposure to it in all forms -
| entertainment, education, science publications.
|
| The best thing about programming is that you don't need an
| invitation to an exclusive club. No degree, no connections,
| no expensive licenses. You can put stuff out there for the
| whole world to see and it costs <100$ to have a functioning
| website with payment integration.
|
| You need talent and dedication to recognize and solve
| problems people consider important. It's maybe the last
| mostly meritocratic fields left. We are lucky to have it, it
| might not be for very long.
| raspasov wrote:
| A lot of people talking about the revenue (no issue with that).
|
| I wonder about the implementation. How is this done? Feels
| performant from my limited testing. I see that it uses WebGL but
| would love to know more details.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| I gave a talk about it two years ago :)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZmaeC_Ma5A
| bckr wrote:
| Ivan I just want to say that you are so incredibly generous
| in your comments, your attitude, everything. You're
| inspiring! Thank you!
| mlok wrote:
| Thank you, Photopea looks amazing (even on mobile!) I'll
| certainly try it in the future. This success is inspiring and
| your talk is very interesting. Do you intend to make sqzr.js
| available to others ?
| raspasov wrote:
| Thank you! Will definitely watch it!
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