PhotoRoom automagically removes background from your photo – TechCrunch:
Meet PhotoRoom, a French startup that has been working on a utility photography mobile app. The concept is extremely simple, which is probably the reason why it has attracted a ton of downloads over the past few months.
After selecting a photo, PhotoRoom removes the background from that photo and lets you select another background. When you're done tweaking your photo, you can save the photo and open it in another app.
"My original vision comes from my time when I was working at GoPro," co-founder and CEO Matthieu Rouif told me. "I often had to remove the background from images and when the designer was out of office, I would spend a ton of time doing it manually."
[...] Downloads really started to take off around February. PhotoRoom now has 300,000 monthly active users. The app is only available on iOS for now. And if you're a professional using it regularly, you can pay for a subscription ($9.49 per month or $46.99 per year) to remove the watermark and unlock more features.
"Subscriptions are what works best on mobile for photo and video apps," Rouif said.
[...] Like VSCO, Darkroom, PicsArt, Filmic Pro and Halide, PhotoRoom belongs to a group of prosumer apps that are tackling photo and video editing from different ways. A generation of users who grew up using visual social networks are now pushing the limits of those apps — they look simple when you first use them, but they offer a ton of depth when you learn what you can do with them. And they prove that smartphones can be great computers, beyond content consumption.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @08:55PM (1 child)
I want PhotoRoom edit all my photos to unperson my former friends when they fall out of favor with me.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @08:58PM
Of course you do Mr Stalin.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @09:00PM (2 children)
BLM activists will remove background items for free.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @09:09PM (1 child)
Bitch Lives Matter. My frenemy took a selfie in front of her shoe closet and I'm envious of all her shoes in the background and I want her shoes.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @12:22AM
Black Looting Morons
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @09:55PM (3 children)
Why would I want to pay you $46.99 to remove my backgrounds? The backgrounds show where I've been, the stores I've looted and the cops who tasered me. If I didn't want backgrounds in my photos, I would just ask for a copy of my mug shots.
(Score: 3, Touché) by driverless on Sunday June 07 2020, @03:50AM (2 children)
It's so you can take photos in your shithole 1-bedroom apartment and then post them to your Instagram account showing off your international travel lifestyle, with you in Hawaii, Borneo, Phuket, the Bahamas, ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Sunday June 07 2020, @02:13PM (1 child)
> It's so you can take photos in your shithole 1-bedroom apartment and then post them to your Instagram account showing off your international travel lifestyle, with you in Hawaii, Borneo, Phuket, the Bahamas, ...
There really should be a "+1 true yet depressing" mod for this one.
Saying that, I thought this technology is already "out there", and has been for a while. Looking at the wiki article for it ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key [wikipedia.org] ), its been done for a while.
Its gotten so prevalent that even video conferencing can do it. I know Zoom meetings can replace backgrounds with whatever you want (even animations). You don't even need a completely blank (or high contrast) background to do it either
What does PhotoRoom do that is unique and novel? From TFS it seems do be a commercial version of what is already widely available.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Monday June 08 2020, @03:06AM
That's probably it, it's slashvertising. Or soylentverstising, if such a word exists.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday June 06 2020, @10:23PM
Now you don't even have to be somewhere interesting to produce one of those awful selfies: just shoot a photo of your mush in the john, then replace the background with a photo of some Carribean island beach to impress your friends...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @10:32PM (3 children)
Death to anyone who uses shit words like that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @11:03PM (2 children)
Not to mention charges a subscription for that automagic. It's worrisome how many people accept the notion of having to continually pay whether or not they want the new features. Sometimes the old version works just fine and doesn't need to be updated with things that big down the software or break old features.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @11:12PM (1 child)
Millennials are accustomed to never owning anything, getting shit pay for gig work, earning less than their Boomer parents, never getting a pension, and never having a chance to retire. So you see, as always, the problem is Boomers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @03:23PM
This hardly deserved a downmod. That's precisely the point. For those using computers 20 years ago or even 10-15 years ago, the idea of paying a subscription was largely restricted to business environments where the subscription was coming with more than just the software keys.
For software that doesn't need an internet connection and doesn't need to interoperate with other software, there's often little reason to update. And updating can lead to features being removed or broken. I remember the CD Ripping software I used to like removing the main feature that led to me buying in the future and it took many, many years before the feature was returned. Under a subscription system, I may not have had a choice about using the older version.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @10:54PM (1 child)
Boomers forced everyone to stay home at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.
Boomers forced every business to close at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.
Boomers forced everyone to wear face masks at gunpoint to give Boomers a safe space.
Boomers caused the worst economic depression in history to give Boomers a safe space.
Whiny entitled Boomers are the worst generation ever to live.
No longer.
Boomers must be made to pay with their lives for crimes against civilization.
The Final Solution to COVID-19 is to exterminate every Boomer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @03:27PM
I think it's interesting how butt hurt the Boomers are at being called out for pretty much destroying the world for their own selfish ends. They got there's, so the hell with the rest of us.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday June 06 2020, @11:49PM (6 children)
Cool, though I'm definitiely meh about a subscription plan.
Now what about a nice de-blur? Smart color correction? Right now, I use the GIMP's white balance to fix fade in old photos. Works pretty well, as long as there's something white in the photo, and the fade is even. But if the tints have shifted, then white balance is not so good. Finally, a good de-speckle would be nice to have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday June 07 2020, @12:33AM
darktable can do all that.
There is even a Windows installer, but I have no idea how well that works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @03:13AM (4 children)
As mentioned, Darktable or Raw Therapee.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday June 07 2020, @12:40PM (3 children)
Thanks. Any suggestions for a particularly difficult case? The photographer who took many of these 60 year old photos was notorious for not holding the camera steady. Most of his pictures have motion blur. I read of and tried a way to fix motion blur: fight blur with blur. It worked fairly well. Sharpened up the photo amazingly, at the cost of adding some heavy shadows. GIMP can motion blur in a straight line. But some of those photos, he moved the camera in an arc, and GIMP doesn't have anything for that.
Some other old photos have not faded evenly. There's a greenish tint to everything. White balance improved that, but it still looks too green. Will see what these tools can do with those photos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @01:14PM
Unless your 60 year old pictures are of Lena, then I don't think anything will work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @03:34PM (1 child)
I've often times wondered about using machine learning to "fix" things like that. Obviously, you can't fix missing image detail, but you could potentially add image detail that looks like it belongs. Same goes for upsizing old cartoons. Machines should be very good at figuring out how to make those larger without losing detail, as there isn't necessarily much to begin with in many animation styles.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 07 2020, @04:18PM
Neural Networks Upscale Film From 1896 to 4K, Make It Look Like It Was Shot on a Modern Smartphone [soylentnews.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waifu2x [wikipedia.org]
This AI Clears Up Your Hazy Photos [youtube.com]
3D Style Transfer For Video is Now Possible! [youtube.com]
Finally, AI-Based Painting is Here! [youtube.com] (GANPaint/GANBrush)
The last one is an approach that lets you use a brush to insert objects into photographs, remove elements, or fill in gaps. I think it works on video too, e.g. take footage of a car driving around and replace the buildings with trees.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @02:47AM (1 child)
Steal algorithm and code.
Implement algorithm in another computer language.
Call it your own and make money.
People have been stealing code since the beginning. PKZip comes to mind as one of the infamous examples of code theft.
A lot of algorithms have been written to do a variety of things on a computer. Then someone stole the algorithms and implemented them for a hand-held computer and started making money.
Look for such algorithms and you will probably find they were written decades ago.
Nothing new here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @01:19PM
That's not even YOUR lawn, bah!