AMA: Ivan Kutskir, creator of Photopea
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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.
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.
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.
That would be Canada, not the US. Even though some US states allow it, the feds do not.
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.
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
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.
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.....
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.
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.
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...
which european country would that be? owning property is out of reach for most europeans because the high tax and social burden make it pretty much impossible to save up for a house
I'm from Slovenia and, ignoring the capital, which has a huge housing shortage (not much room for the city to expand), it's still quite common for people to own apartments. It's definitely decreasing, like everywhere in the world, but not unheard of. I also never said anything about a house - that's a completely different story.
From what I've heard, normal apartments basically don't exist in big tech centres in the US. You either get an expensive moldy hole in the wall or a huge new development that even a C-level will have a hard time getting a loan for.
Again, all of this is just from my perspective with the parameters that I care about. I know it works for many people, but the US really just isn't for me.
When your marginal tax rate rises to roughly 40% once you earn 50k Euros I'd say it is an issue.
And that's only direct taxation.
My guess is he wouldn't want to work in a FAANG and they wouldn't want to hire him.
And many other similar stories
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
- Jeff Hammerbacher
We're going to regret this sooner than later.
I'm not sure what ads can give us...
Oh wait, we still have those nuclear weapons too!
Using the best mind to improve trade is a good thing. Sorry if its not popular around herr but its true.
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.
Would the clever people working on ads and manipulating consumers actually pursue careers like chemical enginerting which solves fundamental problems of human civilisation?
I hate what web ads have become, but I’m pretty sure they’re not a significant driver of homelessness.
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
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.
Either way, isn’t this mostly semantics? My point is that one persons priorities doesn’t necessarily match with another’s.
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.
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 :)
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]
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.
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.
And there are numerous places in Germany and Northern Europe where an experienced developer can command €80-90k.
Consider that a senior position at Amazon Berlin wich lists €80-100K range would be more towards €300k in Bay Area.
That's not what I wrote. I said they pay as well as others in the area. Yes, not everyone pays exactly like Google or Amazon, but other tech jobs in the Bay Area are also far above national median for developers. FAANG pays well but they still pay in relation to the area, they don't just give away $300k paychecks to people anywhere in the world.
And the rest also just confirms what I mean, 80k in Germany are a great salary. Many people won't gain much moving to the Bay Area to get $250k (if they can). The standard of living won't be that much higher than with 80k in Berlin.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/11/03/ire...
[1]: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/apple-s-cash-mountain-ho...
Or Ireland, or France, or Belgium.
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.
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.
Btw, I should probably not post this but we share the exact same name and work in the same field. :D
With everything being remote right now, people have been taking jobs on the California wage scale, but living in Peoria.
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.
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.
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
Are you even allowed to release customer/client info like that?
Edit: thank you!
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.
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.
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 ;)
But yes, this is why I suggested testing with a separate subdomain.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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)
SimilarWeb says the website has had 8 million visits in the past 6 months. His CPM must be very, very high.
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?
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.
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.
Ok then running photopea is not comparable to a FAANG 9-5
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.
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
And there's a high chance they would be rejected for lack of culture fit anyway. Or fail one of the quirky whiteboard tests.
...or assuming that an excellent programmer (or, in fact, just a programmer) wants to deal with FAANG in the first place.
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.
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).
Or also simply not being a cultural fit. What if you’re a republican?
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.
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.
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.
1. I have worked for FAANG adjacent companies(similar market cap) in the silicon valley. It is not exactly a badge of honor, sure - if other people want to honor you and you want to ride it why not. But it is not a badge of honor IMO. Horror? Sure.
2. People talk about 200+ guaranteed for a long time now. I think no one has caught on to it yet. Programmers of this caliber can and do pull ~600K regularly in FAANG and FAANG adjacent. If they are capable of people management at the same time (very few at this programming caliber are), then they will be pushed into the executive situation with millions in stock.
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 $10-20/month on a single customer, and kicking them out is probably not worth the effort and the risk of even the smallest amount of bad press/word-of-mouth.
But it's still a far shot from needing a tens of millions of dollars to build a factory, or even tens of thousands to buy some basic equipment for some smaller business that doesn't have the potential to get anywhere nearly as big.
The best thing about programming is that you don't need an invitation to an exclusive club. No degree, no connections, no expensive licenses. You can put stuff out there for the whole world to see and it costs <100$ 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.
Edit: rephrase
Totally agree that the ads paying the bills is what enabled Photopea to become so good in the end.
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.
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!
You can also use it to convert Gimp, Sketch, Figma, SVG and other formats to layered PSDs.
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...
.app > div:first-child {
min-width: 99vw;
}
.panelblock.mainblock {
flex: 1;
}Something tells me I'm by far not the only one who has heard of Photoshop, and GIMP, but not Photopea.
Of course one way to defend that would be to have the company be US based or with founding US partners.
https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9urjmg/i_made_a_free_...
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.
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.
1. Putting ads in an iframe hosted on a separate origin.
2. Posting a privacy policy.
Along with Figma one of the brightest examples of how browser apps can be slick, performant and powerful.
- AWS Cloud9 (IDE)
- Google Docs (Office Suite)
- Gravit Designer (Vector editor)
- Photopea (Photo editor)
- Google Mail
What are your favorite web apps?
It's rather good.
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.
But neither Krita nor Gimp are supposed to be drop-in replacements for Photoshop anyway so that's okay.
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
Also if you have a slower computer wouldn't running everything in Javascript be the last thing that you would want to do.
Furthermore if you where to measure RAM usage between the apps I bet GIMP would be far more conservative with the same load.
Also if you are editing images for a living 100 megabyte really isn't that much? Lets say you have RGB images of a resolution of 1920x1080. Sixteen or seventeen of this would be 100 MB already? If you are using layers you quite quickly reach this amount of storage. So the size of GIMP is really negligible.
The only definition of someone with more "limited means", where this would be better is someone who is using a chromebook but still has a 1st world tier internet connection. I'd be happy to be corrected if I am wrong however.
Photopea instead copies Photoshop’s interface, which is its real asset.