[HN Gopher] SnapDiagram - Instantly Convert Hand-Drawn Diagrams ...
___________________________________________________________________
SnapDiagram - Instantly Convert Hand-Drawn Diagrams to Digital with
AI
Author : tompreneur
Score : 90 points
Date : 2024-08-23 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (snapdiagram.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (snapdiagram.xyz)
| tompreneur wrote:
| Hey Hacker News,
|
| I'm excited to introduce SnapDiagram, an AI-powered web app that
| allows users to seamlessly transform hand-crafted diagrams into
| polished, digital visuals. Whether you're sketching ideas during
| a brainstorming session or mapping out a quick process flow on
| paper, SnapDiagram can help you bring those rough drafts into the
| digital world, instantly and effortlessly.
|
| How it works:
|
| - Snap a photo of your hand-drawn diagram using your phone or
| upload an image from your computer. - Our AI processes the image
| to recognize shapes, text, and connections. - Get a clean,
| editable digital version that you can export in various formats,
| share, or enhance further.
|
| Checkout how it works on this video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2cq8B7vTXw
| groby_b wrote:
| Congrats on building this into a working app!
|
| But as far as I can tell, this is simply a workflow that e.g.
| ChatGPT and Claude have supported for quite a while now. (It's
| what I do with my whiteboard diagrams)
|
| Which means you'll probably need to think of a value add to
| help it gain traction. I'm curious to see where you'll be
| taking it!
| humansareok1 wrote:
| The people willing to pay 20$ to learn to use ChatGPT/Claude
| to accomplish this probably doesn't have much overlap with
| the people willing to pay x$ to have a clean web interface to
| do just this one task.
| groby_b wrote:
| IDK - the "help me get stuff done" crowd seems to use LLMs
| fairly frequently. If I'm wrong and they're disjoint
| markets, more power to tompreneur. But even then, it means
| his moat is very thin.
|
| (It might have been a different proposition when doing this
| took major prompting gyrations, but multimodal LLMs have
| gotten pretty amazing in the last few months)
|
| Of course, if it's just a hobby project, it doesn't matter.
| But if this is in search of traction, it very much does.
| jaysonelliot wrote:
| This is an outstanding first release. I hope stylizing the
| diagrams automatically for visual impact is on the roadmap.
| tompreneur wrote:
| Thanks for the support jaysonelliot! Yes! the first iteration
| of this new feature would allow the user choose from certain
| predefined styles.
| adamsocrat wrote:
| I was searching something like this to convert my maps, charts
| drawings in iPad to Obsidian. But 1 diagram/month is so not
| enough. Yes 3$ for 50 diagram/month is looks like a better option
| compared to the free but it's still a paid option.
|
| It is cumbersome for me to start another paid service let alone
| another risk of trust I am putting myself in.
|
| Make it free option 15 diagram/month and let people try your site
| fully so that who uses it that 15 diagram can switch to paid
| option.
| tompreneur wrote:
| Hey adamsocrat, thanks for your interest in SnapDiagram! If you
| tried it and fulfills your needs, we can provide you with one
| month free of charge of the basic plan. So you can decide if it
| is worth it, and help us improve it.
| thelastparadise wrote:
| Curious, would you be more likely to pay for a service like
| this if you could pay per use with a very low friction
| checkout?
| tptacek wrote:
| Counterpoint: no matter what product you ship, someone is
| always going to tell you that you should have a free plan
| generous enough that they won't need to pay for it, and if you
| listen to them you'll go out of business. The object of this
| game is to be creating enough value that people who love your
| product willingly pay for it, not to create just enough value
| that people who dabble in your product use it once in awhile.
| humansareok1 wrote:
| I mean sure I want people to clean my house and mow my lawn for
| me for free too but services have costs...
| Syzygies wrote:
| I want to go in the other direction: Take computer-generated math
| animation and make it look like Walt Disney was in his office
| "relaxing" while fifty artists drew each frame in a better
| version of my artist's hand.
| tompreneur wrote:
| This is a cool idea
| smcleod wrote:
| I don't see why you need a seperate app / subscription for this.
| Claude does this very well, as do local VLMs such as InternVLM.
| They generate mermaid graphs which you can use directly or import
| to excalidraw.
| humansareok1 wrote:
| Do you think average joe knows about let alone knows how to use
| Claude for this?
| smcleod wrote:
| I mean you just type "create this diagram"...
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I feel like we are building a very large and complex interface
| between human beings and the internet, so that we are becoming
| more like mechanical nodes on the network, where slowly the
| idiosyncracies of individuality are being erased. That's not
| unique to AI, but AI is a major component of it now. I can
| imagine future scenarios where every part of our communication is
| passed through an AI filter until we are all perfectly tuned to
| be mindless consumers of information.
|
| This SnapDiagram does it for sketches, and LLMs do it for text.
| Soon everyone will sound very similar and the system will be able
| to remove any aspect of individuality that is troublesome to it
| with a mere parameter tuning.
|
| The little picture is just a conversion to a more readable
| diagram. The big picture is the slow erasing of the human spirit.
| hntcz wrote:
| Damn, well put!
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| So all the highly unique, contextually relevant and
| aesthetically pleasing AI art that I am seeing pop up in blogs,
| chats, documentation, presentations, etc where before there
| would have been nothing or maaaybe some ultra-generic clipart,
| this explosion of creativity is slowly erasing the human
| spirit? Nah. Looks like the opposite, if anything.
|
| "It all looks the same" -> there's plenty of room for better
| prompting and models. Just look at civit.ai -- the "sameness"
| problem is just low skill with the new tools. The floor used to
| be "looks like a kid drew it," now the floor is "looks like the
| default StableDiffusion style." Replace with whatever domain
| you are interested in, I am using art as an example because it
| is comparatively further down the maturation curve. In any
| case, the ceiling is high and it still takes effort to reach,
| but the bar is raised everywhere.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > So all the highly unique, contextually relevant and
| aesthetically pleasing AI art that I am seeing pop up in
| blogs, chats, documentation, presentations, etc where before
| there would have been nothing or maaaybe some ultra-generic
| clipart, this explosion of creativity is slowly erasing the
| human spirit? Nah. Looks like the opposite, if anything.
|
| None of that art represents the individual experience of a
| person any more. It's all a psychotic averaging. I've seen
| that art too and I find it disgusting.
|
| I don't see anything people are producing with AI as
| representing the human spirit. I see it as humans being
| plugged into a machine pushed to create and create and for
| what? What's the next step? It's horrific and should be
| destroyed.
| doug_durham wrote:
| So someone who has lost the use of their voice and uses a
| text to voice program is disgusting and has no human
| spirit? I would disagree. In the same way new AI tools
| allow people who could not express themselves otherwise to
| express themselves. Does it mean they have good taste? Not
| necessarily, but it is authentic communication.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I'd argue that the person who lost its voice have no
| choice, the people choosing to draw by AI to express
| themselves do it by sheer laziness and to get quick
| gratification, but that seems what technology is mostly
| about, putting any effort in any pursuit is so old
| school.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Adding an image does not automatically make a post better.
| I'd rather just not have any image at all than something
| mindlessly thrown in just for its own sake, regardless of
| whether it's generic or generated.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| I'd argue the opposite in fact. It's more often than not
| making it worse. It adds nothing and it's a waste of
| bandwidth
| jayd16 wrote:
| > this explosion of creativity
|
| But is it? It's fancier clip art, no?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| It is in my opinion because it has that extremely generic
| feel, even more than clip art because at least the clip art
| had some character from the artist.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Those AI photos at the start of blogs often make me say "fuck
| it" and go back.
|
| It screams "I rushed this out, I'm probably regurgitating
| something I just learned".
|
| I rather a dorky stock photo than some nonsense AI image
| puking out some combination of "cyber", "tech", "hacker", and
| "circuit".
|
| It's unserious at best, scammy at its worst.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Exactly. I stop reading any article as soon as I see an AI
| image.
| IndySun wrote:
| I cringe when I see one, but sometimes the articles are
| good. Apparently, some people have great writing skills
| but suck at visual taste. Though, arguably, they aught to
| know that about themselves.
| doug_durham wrote:
| That an interpretation. The other interpretation is "Hey
| I'm not a talented artist. This tool allows me to express
| an idea I couldn't otherwise." Yes AI art is used in scams,
| and AI doesn't give you good taste. By I don't think it
| indicates laziness.
| jen729w wrote:
| If your blog isn't about art, why does it need the entire
| above-the-fold taken up with generated 'art'?
|
| And if it is about art, you should be showing art.
| barrell wrote:
| To each there own -- I loved the AI art for about one month
| but since then it's become insanely triggering. It's
| everywhere now and it all has this same "feel".
|
| What used to just be an unsplash image that I never gave any
| thought to is now a serious detractor that can often
| overshadow the content (for me)
|
| I've clicked out of articles and videos many times because of
| the AI art. I agree with OP that it feels like it's washing
| out a lot of individuality at the moment.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I prefer a stock image as well. At least it was crafted by
| a human being behind a camera. And as a pro photographer,
| and someone who takes thousands of photos a month and views
| thousands more, there is something indescribably human
| about human works that are lacking in AI.
| doug_durham wrote:
| There is no way you could tell the difference between
| stock photo and AI generated art. Stock photos are
| created to be generic and soulless. That allows them to
| have the most broad applicability.
| itishappy wrote:
| I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. Got any examples
| you think would stump us?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| AI image generation has taught me two things: never had it
| been more obvious that taste is only cultivated through a
| careful, studied engagement with human arts and culture and
| never has this been more irrelevant to the majority of
| people.
|
| The American slop factory is the predominant cultural idiom
| and like this country's factory farming is now an entire
| automated machinery for mass producing and force feeding
| everyone poison. I'm hoping some subset of countries will go
| AI art Galapagos to preserve a trace of our humanity and
| aspire to something beyond the median of a Google image
| search.
| blargey wrote:
| No, the human spirit does not lie in the identical LucidChart
| diagram I would have made in order to transcribe a whiteboard
| photo without a tool like this. It's a _direct transcription_ ,
| the exact class of AI work that is irrelevant to your broad
| point about the human spirit. No choice or decision is being
| delegated to statistical noise here. Failing to make that
| distinction weakens your message imo.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I disagree really, actually, because the tool offers large-
| scale mechanization and uniformization of human activity with
| relatively low cost, which is the proto form of more advanced
| AI.
| doug_durham wrote:
| Disagree. There are different use cases for diagrams. The first
| is communication. My people are poor at drawing diagrams. That
| means our speech in the medium is limited. Tools like the
| expand our ability to communicate. A second use case is
| artistic expression. I can't imagine why you would use such a
| tool for artistic expression. Nothing is being lost here.
| alok-g wrote:
| @Tompreneur,
|
| I would like to learn more about the features:
|
| - What types of diagrams does this support? E.g., could the
| diagrams include some cartoons, artwork, icons, besides generic
| shapes like ellipses and arrows like shown in the video?
|
| - What editable formats are supported? SVG?
|
| - Privacy policy stuff. Would my diagrams be stored in the
| account? (I prefer not. I like it stateless.)
|
| I am happy to try to find above answers myself, however, do not
| want to create a login just for trying. Also, I prefer site-
| specific login systems as opppsed to BigCo login IDs like Google
| mentioned.
|
| I need to digitise about 15-20 diagrams. If it would work for
| these, I am ready to pay $10 for these. (I've seen the pricing at
| $3 for more diagrams than what I need.)
| tompreneur wrote:
| Hi alok-g, thanks for your interest in SnapDiagram!
|
| The application focuses mainly on converting simple diagrams of
| connected shapes with text. May work with some simple icon, but
| probably won't work for cartoons or complex artwork.
|
| The editable file is compatible with https://app.diagrams.net.
| If you need an SVG, you can import your editable file there and
| export it as SVG.
|
| The application does not store your diagrams permanently. These
| have a max TTL of 12hs.
| alok-g wrote:
| >> converting simple diagrams of connected shapes with text
|
| All 10+ AI-based diagramming solutions I see on the web are
| like that.
| sidcool wrote:
| One diagram per month for free.
| cal85 wrote:
| What's the "Editable file" format?
| vzaliva wrote:
| Nice job! This is something I would use. However, the pricing
| plans are not friendly for occasional users. I maybe use it 10
| times a year, but the only option is a monthly subscription. I
| wish they also had pay-per-use plans.
|
| This illustrates the annoying trend for software products to
| insist on monthly subscriptions. I understand that businesses
| want recurring revenue, but many users would rather pay upfront
| or per use.
| seattleeng wrote:
| I get your point but its $3/mo or $18/yr. If a diagram isnt
| worth 1.80 to you then you probably wouldnt have bought it even
| with pay as you go
| sramam wrote:
| I have always wondered if projects like this would be better
| off having a pay-as-you-go-model. One example:
| - Minimum account balance to start: $10. - $1/use
| - Then top-off as you need - no balance expiry
| (outside service going bust)
| seattleeng wrote:
| A credit based model with minimum add amounts like that
| does sound like a great alternative if people prefer usage
| based pricing. From what Ive seen usage pricing actually
| drives a lot of anxiety even if the end cost is lower
| jen729w wrote:
| Auphonic has this model and I've been a happy on/off
| customer for 10+ years now. (They do audio processing.)
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| Cool idea and implementation. Great job.
|
| I personally hand draw diagrams and then recreate them in
| Balsamiq (old school).
|
| I, myself, won't use it because there's a lot of creation and
| innovation that happens in the transition phase when going from
| hand-drawn sketches to creating the diagrams.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Oh man this is a great idea. I can't count the number of times
| I've spent an hour in a meeting diagraming stuff on a whiteboard
| and then taken a picture of the whiteboard on the way out. This
| would be super useful for documenting the results of meetings
| like this.
| vunderba wrote:
| You can actually do this now - I've taken a great deal of my hand
| written workflow diagrams, snapped a picture of them, and asked
| chatGPT to convert them to mermaid UML.
|
| It was one of the more impressive demonstrations of multimodal
| AI.
|
| You can also import mermaid into Google's Draw.io app if you want
| to reflow or change the theme.
| emahhh wrote:
| I did something really similar by converting handwritten math
| to LaTeX.
|
| This use case (and yours as well) can be really useful and
| works well just by using ChatGPT. In many cases people are just
| building wrappers of gpt-4o, but I can see some room for
| improvement by building on top of OpenAI's APIs.
| smcleod wrote:
| Even better - Excalidraw supports importing mermaid - and it
| has a built in AI tool where you can bring your own LLM via an
| API to generate diagram without even leaving the app.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Credit card sign up not working. Would prefer to pay via Amazon
| Pay, Google Pay or Stripe given past history with Paypal.
| codersfocus wrote:
| I have a need for something like this. I want to convert hand
| written / drawn stuff to SVG. Not to a defined diagram schema
| though, just freeform SVG.
|
| Any suggestions on alternative tools? For pricing reference, I
| would be incorporating this into my app, and users might convert
| 1 page a day. For what I would earn, your pricing model would be
| completely unusable.
|
| I will have to build either a CV pipeline or use NNs, I imagine.
| Not sure which is the better approach for my task.
| janice1999 wrote:
| No privacy policy link on your landing page is a red flag and
| will discourage users.
| weidezhang wrote:
| very cool and a very useful tool to integrate with drawio and
| lucidchards or visio maybe ?
| weidezhang wrote:
| very cool tool.
| xra_11 wrote:
| Can't you do this with https://flowchart.fun?
| tonerow wrote:
| No, you can't upload an image- it's just via prompt.
| SnapDiagram looks really useful!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-23 23:01 UTC)