PixLens: A lens that turns the scenery you see into pixel art | Hacker News Reader

PixLens: A lens that turns the scenery you see into pixel art

monoli-shop.com

94 pointsmiles27 comments

This is functionally similar to the Claude glass. Taking the form of a dark tinted convex mirror it was used since the 1700s by landscape painters to simplify and reduce the tonal contrast of a view. When I was a student I would improve a similar effect by smearing Vaseline on my glasses.

Oh man, I was just about to rant how now we're boiling the ocean instead of using the pixelate feature of literally every graphics editor, and then I looked up what actually is a Claude Glass... It's not that Claude.

I assume you meant “improvise”?

Yep I did. Too late to edit.

There is a seller in China who sells similar products on the Xiaohongshu platform. Only sold for 50 RMB. https://www.xiaohongshu.com/user/profile/60c6ba3a00000000200...

I can find similar on aliexpress. Although there are two types, the plastic ones which are about this price, and the crystal ones which are more like the price of the OP.

For a moment I thought the “rotate to match image” captcha was the product image :P

Discussions 6 months ago:

(91 points, 30 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40895907

(132 points, 36 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40890633

If you’re buying this for the novelty effect, there are cheaper versions; e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/Piegricdiat-Stylized-Keychain-Suitabl... This listing in particular is interesting, it has a video too.

Pleasantly surprised to see this isn't a GenAI thing.

I have a glass-based cutting borad with a certain pattern that creates this effect. It's also quite large so supposedly you could take some really interesting pictures with it. Funny, but this is the main reason I kept it around.

Do you know the brand, out of interest? But also, isn't a glass cutting board really bad for knives? The reason cutting boards are usually made from wood is that wood is slightly soft and will do less damage to the metal edge of the knife.

I kinda want one, but big enough for a small window. Get a view without getting distracted.

Or, you can take a photo through a mosquito screen (with the focus on the screen or slightly behind it)[1].

No fancy lens needed :)

(Think of the mosquito screen as a pinhole lens array)

[1] See e.g. https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/mosquito-net-close-up-back...

Not even remotely comparable

Just out of curiosity since this is not my field at all, what software can do something similar?

Functionality is called "Pixelate" and almost every free picture editing software can do it.

Downsize then size up again with nearest neighbour interpolation. Imagemagick can do it.

Used to do exactly this for reference when learning how to do drawn pixel art

Too bad Trumbull (I think it was him) didn't have Imagemagick when the original "Westworld" was being filmed.

https://youtu.be/MB7YIYER9hk

Not Doug Trumbull, it was John Whitney Jr and Gary Demos at Information International Inc (Triple-I) who did the Westworld “android vision” effect.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120717074134/http://www.beanbl...

Thanks for clarifying. Too late to edit my original post.

How do the results of such lenses compare to various compression algorhitms?

That would be lossful compression, not sure if that's relevant

Lossy compression is extremely useful and you use it every day. Whether you're listening to music, having a call or looking at a video, most of the time you'll be on the receiving end of lossy compression.

Yes, I'm aware, but we have more efficient methods of compression than just down sampling the image to like 40x40 px

I wish to have a big story (related with computer games) to use this lens to record a movie.

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