Show HN: Lensflare – The Next Unsplash | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Lensflare – The Next Unsplash

Hey guys, I made an image sharing website somewhat like Unsplash. I would like to hear your thoughts on it please. https://lensflare.cf/

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From https://lensflare.cf/details/5

> I saw this on dev.to, loved it so much I downloaded it.

Whoa, that is not how this works. The big thing about Unsplash is the license guarantee. If this is just random images you found elsewhere, then this is just Google Images or imgur. This is not a site of vetted stock images.

> If this is just random images you found elsewhere, then this is just Google Images or imgur.

Just to amplify this: Every company I've ever worked for is pro-creator and anti-risk, so the provenance and license for all content must be front and center.

> The big thing about Unsplash is the license guarantee.

How strong is the guarantee? What happens if someone uploads an infringing photo or one without model release to Unsplash then you use it and get sued?

This and most everything else you'd want to know is addressed in their official Unsplash License guide and FAQ: https://help.unsplash.com/en/articles/2612329-releases-and-t...

> While photographers agree that photos they upload on Unsplash have model releases, there is no reasonable way for us to monitor all photos that get uploaded to Unsplash. We cannot make any guarantees, therefore we recommend when using a photo containing a person, that you should not imply endorsement by the person in the photo.

It's a great service but how careful do you need to be with caveats like this compared to other sources?

Unsplashed was initially a hand-picked collection, and as far as I know submission is now heavily curated (and probably checked with reverse image search).

Disclaimer: Used to work as an engineer for a top stock site(s).

What is the main competitive advantage to Unsplash? Unsplash has many thousands of images. Does this have more? Are they higher quality? (From the looks on the homepage they look of poorer quality) Follow-up, is there anything you're doing different than any other stock site?

Stock sites are a boring business because there is often little innovation. Don't get me wrong, they can be very profitable but nonetheless boring. Unsplash I believe was successful in part due to the CC license and offering an API to get images quick. I'm not seeing as much on Lensflare.

When I visit unsplash, the first thing that greets me is a box about their license, whereas on lensflare I can do <C-f> "license" and find nothing.

I think it would be a good idea to go on unsplash and look at all the labels they are using. For example "Picture of the day".

Also, when I click on an image, the details pane is pretty small. On unsplash I can see the full-size image, on lensflare I have to manually do RMB->View Image.

It is also not clear to me what the check-mark means when I click on an image in the "card preview".

e: Also, the big hero-images behind the search box seem to be jumping. Just go to [1] and press P-UP and P-DOWN a few times.

Furthermore, why is the hero-image generic? A picture of the sea? doesn't exactly spell animals to me.

1: https://lensflare.cf/browse?filter=animals

> Furthermore, why is the hero-image generic? A picture of the sea? doesn't exactly spell animals to me.

I refreshed a few times and suddenly the sea was replaced by a polar scene:

https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1614597388646-fea96377eb91...

This was the first image I found that I liked on this site.

Can you tell the impatient reader what you did better than unsplash?

Not every business has to be ‘better’, they have to be merely good enough and improve over time.

Looking at your profile saying you're a "fifteen-year-old homeschooler", this seems similar to a school project. Can you provide more context behind the motivation and process for the project? Technologies used? How you learned them? What difficulties you faced?

Can you download webp photos? That’s something missing from Unsplash, which is a pain as they’d prefer you hotlink.

They don't prefer that you hotlink, but they prefer you use their API if you hotlink. In any case there's no requirement or expectation to hotlink, and their license explicitly allows you to distribute Unsplash photos in whatever format you like.

No, you have it backwards. If you use the API, you must hotlink.

https://help.unsplash.com/en/articles/2511271-guideline-hotl...

That's incorrect. Technical Guideline #2 of Unsplash API Guidelines specifically addresses API download use cases.

Nope that’s not what #2 says. They write an action similar to a download must trigger an endpoint, you still need to hotlink.

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