How we open sourced Instagram | Hacker News Reader

How we open sourced Instagram

backspac.es

49 pointslallouz21 comments

Heh.. not very much on the "how" but I appreciate the effort!

I guess we'll be seeing a lot of these filters pop up in other apps now. I don't really mind, a lot of people gave shit to Instagram for being a billion-dollar-app which made photos look worse, but I think I prefer fake-shitty than the weirdly-sharp digital look that most cell phones produce.

Anyway, bravo, and that's for releasing this as free software!

Hey Mizza, you read the github page here https://github.com/gobackspaces/DLCImagePickerController#rea... for more info.

I think open-source obj-C has a long way to go, and I want to help as much as I can.

As for "fake-shitty" I assure you, these are not shitty, nor are they meant to be straight copies. Check out this high res version of the output http://i.imgur.com/0OncO.jpg

Heh, when I mean 'fake shitty', I mean the filters themselves are meant to make the photos look aged, blurry, etc. "Fake shitty." Wabi-sabi.

Ah, completely understand. Valid point.

The title feels a bit sensationalist. Yes, some open sourced iOS live filters are totally cool, but this really has nothing to do with Instagram.

Instagram is more than some photo filters.

Mind, this is the part of Instagram everyone actually cares about.

I think that's what is commonly picked up on, but I think Instagram's magic actually comes from how frictionless it is to share a photo and use the service. The photo filters are a part of that - the fun and quirky part - but its actually not what makes it special imo.

that's definitely fair. i guess we could have said it's more the initial hook of instagram that we're open sourcing :)

Based on Brad Larson's GPUImage, amazing OpenGL based image filters library, very hackable if you learn GLSL :)

Yup. I made sure the second line in the repo readme was "The majority of the praise should be directed towards BradLarson for his GPUImage library."

What was actually released? The github page seems to have a single non-forked repository: http://github.com/gobackspaces

We released an iOS camera with live filters and blur at https://github.com/gobackspaces/DLCImagePickerController

The post is a little bit misleading. You didn't open source Instagram but a component used by the app. Am I right?

That's fair. if you are looking for full functionality, I suggest you merge Parse's AnyPic (https://github.com/ParsePlatform/Anypic) with this camera picker component. IG is much more than just filters, but it is definitely a big reason they are popular.

Thanks for sharing. I'm more interested in how you created the curve files?

I created them using Photoshop, and used GPUImage to parse the files it created. I tested each filter on a sample of iPhone images in different lighting conditions.

i'm one of the founders at backspac.es and i was curious what people thought of the story format that's produced. feedback is most welcome :)

I came here to say "how the hell can I get a backspac.es account". Loved it, absolutely loved it.

Awesome!

For now you can just sign up on the homepage (http://www.backspac.es) and we'll let you know when we're good to go. Should be any day hopefully!

happy to chat more on the emails, twitter etc, cheers!

Signed up already!

Great job on it.

By way of exchange, I'll offer what meager observations my usability & QA expertise inform when I start using :-)

sweet! we're desperate for UX thoughts and feedback - definitely the piece we're most keen to polish for the first update :)

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