
Gifpop.io – Print gifs with the magic of lenticular printing - tpsc
http://gifpop.io/
======
doctorwho
Very cool! I wrote code to do this back in 1995 for a company called 3DCOM. We
supported full color, full page prints from a sequence of 24 images, each from
a slightly different angle to produce a 3D "holographic" printout. the effect
was so good you could stick your finger into the image.

At the time (the dark ages of commodity printer technology) it required an
EPSON inkjet that could do at least 1200dpi. After printing you just slapped a
sticky-backed lenticular lens (lined up with registration marks) on the
printout and voila!

I kept one 8"x10" 3D printout of a buckyball that's still pretty impressive
looking, even after nearly 20 years!

~~~
vanderZwan
Twenty years from that to this? That's a pretty long time without anyone doing
anything with this technology then (this doesn't sound much more advanced than
what you did back then, except for the addition of internet and gifs).

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I think it's neat this service finally exists!

~~~
mxfh
My personal theory is, that it was tumblr's original arbitrary limit of 512KB
(now 1MB) that elevated GIF content's artistic quality to new levels.

Before there were all kinds of GIFs, but mainly unedited direct frame
sequences out of movie files, yet there was no need to keep the files small.
Yet if you wanted to see them in your dashboard stream in their full animated
glory, the GIFs had to be kept under that limit at all costs.

Creative workarounds were found (minimizing frames/short loops/masking out
static parts of the image) to create outstanding rebloggable content worth
sharing.

If tumblr didn't have that limit, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be seeing the
current GIF-renaissance, maybe reaction-GIFs, but for sure not stuff like:

iwdrm, mr. div, head like an orange

file under:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_limitation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_limitation)

~~~
shashashasha
Thanks for this! This thought has been stewing in my head for a while too.
Like, for example, cinemagraphs are a creative invention forced by the
constraint of the GIF format (ie, tumblr and imgur's size limit means playing
to GIF's strengths, like only animating regions of images).

We've also heard from working with Mr. Div and Patakk and the others that
sometimes they do hacks to maximize their oomph. For Patakk, sometimes his
geometries don't take up the full 500px so that he can pack more motion in a
smaller area (and so for our art prints, he's filling out the frame more
because that restriction isn't there). Exciting times!

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sarah2079
This is an awesome idea. I would love the option to upload a short video clip
instead of a gif though, and have it take 10 evenly spaced frames from the
video. My nieces (ages 8 & 10) would love to use this to make prints of
themselves in action, but it would be easier for them to be able go straight
from a video taken with a phone to a printed product.

~~~
shashashasha
Thanks! We currently do support Vine and Instagram video, and you can pick a
short clip from there. Processing all videos in all formats is a little tricky
right now and it's helpful to have the pre-constraint of those social
networks. Taking video from a phone is a great idea though!

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Expanding on what doctorwho said:

    
    
        ffmpeg -i input.whatever frame-%04d.png
    

Explode virtually any video format into frames, assuming that you've
configured ffmpeg generously at compile time.

~~~
shashashasha
Totally! We just need to do more work on our end to make sure we don't end up
accidentally accepting multi-gig video files. Vine and Instagram is a
convenient way to start because it's much more constrained :)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn

        client_max_body_size 50M;

~~~
shashashasha
Haha awesome. We need to step up our game! We're primarily frontend
designer/developers and this is our first node.js project :)

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aleyan
Looks fantastic.

I noticed that all the lenticulars demonstrated have horizontally aligned
lenses for a final image that you rock head to heel. Why not offer a
vertically aligned lenses for a final image to that you rock side to side? If
I understand correctly, a user should be able to do this themselves if they
flip the source image 90 degrees, but an option would be nice. There are some
issues with your eyes seeing different frames with vertical lenses, but that
could be used for cool stereo effects too.

~~~
shashashasha
Hi Aleyan! Yes, side to side works but it works much better when you're
further away (unless you've calculated the eye spacing and distance in your
imagery). We're planning on offering the option for artist prints to be
printed horizontally or vertically, because some of them will be hung on
walls.

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devindotcom
10 frames is a little scanty, but I think the idea is great. I'm afraid most
of my favorite gifs won't fit, but using this type of display is forehead-
slappingly obvious - now that they've done it, of course.

~~~
shashashasha
Hi, thanks! 10 frames is a little short right now we agree, and we're working
with our manufacturer to get even more. The main constraint is the
registration accuracy between the lens and the print, which gets super hard
when printing more than a few frames.

~~~
swashboon
Have you tested making "loops" with larger frame counts by example printing
out a strip and taping the ends together and spinning it to create a movie
effect? Does that make sense?

~~~
AdamTReineke
This wouldn't work smoothly because each image would be, for example, 2 inches
wide. You may have several frames per image, but then your eyes would have to
jump two inches to the next frame. The old style zoetrope would have a much
cleaner effect.

~~~
shashashasha
That's actually one reason why we're limiting things to up/down rotation also
— the spacing of your eyes makes it hard to display lots of frames accurately
when you're rotating it left/right. And zoetropes, so cool! We really want to
try some of these out too: [http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/the-first-
animated-gif...](http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/the-first-animated-
gifs/)

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kadjar
Is there really no way to see the pricing structure before I upload things?
That's frustrating.

~~~
shashashasha
That's great feedback! We've been so rushed to get it out the door for the
holidays that we're lacking some basic information up front. We'll get that up
shortly!

For now, some price/sizing deets:

$12 each — 2.125" x 3.375" — Business Card

$12 each — 2.75" x 2.75" — Small Square

$15 each — 3.5" x 5.0" — Postcard

$15 each — 5.0" x 5.0" — Large Square

~~~
cadr
$12 for a _single business card_?

I feel like I would be better served by stapling my existing business card to
a $10 bill...

~~~
shashashasha
It's definitely pricy if you order one at a time, but if you want a run of
business cards costs come down to a couple dollars each. Or you can just
staple your existing business card to a $1 bill!

~~~
owenmarshall
>It's definitely pricy if you order one at a time, but if you want a run of
business cards costs come down to a couple dollars each.

I found those prices in the 'how it works' page and nearly closed the tab
without a second thought. You might want to give some prices for larger runs,
or at the very least say _somewhere_ that volume discounts are available. Now
that I know that I wouldn't have to pay thousands of dollars for business
cards, I'm more interested.

~~~
shashashasha
We totally understand! We still have to finalize pricing with our manufacturer
so that's why we've asked people on the homepage to email us with business
card / wedding invitation inquiries. It gets almost an order of magnitude
cheaper logistics/labor wise to do large runs, we just need to make sure we
can do a good enough quality job!

~~~
atgm
My first thought was "Holy cow, this would make an amazing card!" followed by
"Holy cow, that's a lot of money, forget about it!"

Even now, I'm skeptically thinking "'Larger runs' probably means at least a
thousand... who has three grand to drop on cards?"

~~~
shashashasha
Large runs means about 50-100 or more, so not too much!

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geekfactor
Just placed an order. Looking forward to receiving the card.

You guys should consider doing affiliate deals with places like
[http://makeagif.com](http://makeagif.com). (That's where I made my animated
GIF in the first place.)

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biot
I know this ship has sailed, but the G in GIF is pronounced like in "gin", not
like in "gig".

~~~
scoofy
As a student of philosophy of language I love/hate this debate. I'll say this,
I feel badly for people who think the creator gets to control the
pronunciation. Hopefully the prescriptivists will learn language evolves
irregardless of whether we want it to. Whenever you think you have firm rules,
you will find they will change momentarily. Let me know if you spot what I
snuck in there.

~~~
knapp
You snuck in "irregardless" and I claim my $5 reward.

(Maybe you also snuck in "hopefully":
[http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hopeful...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hopefully?q=hopefully)
)

~~~
gunn
Think there are a few more - "feel badly", "momentarily"

~~~
scoofy
Good eye. Only one more!

~~~
StavrosK
No second clause in the "whether"? That's "sneaking out", though.

Also, feh, descriptivists...

~~~
scoofy
It's "snuck" rather than "sneaked." Considered incorrect by many for nearly 50
or so years.

~~~
StavrosK
Seriously? "Snuck" is incorrect? That's the first time I hear about this.

~~~
scoofy
It's not though, that's the entire point. All usages except irregardless,
which is well on its way, are considered correct, though not so in the past.

Also, snuck is the last accepted irregular verb, rather than pronoun.

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skyebook
We were lucky enough to have Sha and Rachel come to ultravisual for lunch
yesterday, first time I got to see some of the lenticulars in person and they
look _awesome_. I think they're taking this in a really fun direction, can't
wait to see what people make with the service :)

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ljf
I want to see more shots of the actual prints though, I only saw one in the
video, be good to get a better idea of the quality of the print and the
motion.

~~~
shashashasha
Thanks! Here are some more links to gifs we've printed for artists:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/338114/gifs/by_me/mrdiv-...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/338114/gifs/by_me/mrdiv-8x8.gif)
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/338114/gifs/by_me/dvdp-8...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/338114/gifs/by_me/dvdp-8x8.gif)
And here's one of the very first we made, only with four frames and with a
lower quality manufacturer, but it was a gift for a friend:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/338114/gifs/by_me/firstg...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/338114/gifs/by_me/firstgifpop_migurski.gif)

~~~
Semaphor
That Immortal business card is amazing :D

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jasonkostempski
Genius! Just one request. Crop a little off the left of the animation. I can't
stop staring at the hair on that thumb. It's like watching tall grass sway in
the wind.

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csmuk
OMG.

I was just looking at one of my children's books earlier and came up with
exactly this idea. Two hours later, sit down on HN and someone has already
done it.

Awesome work whoever did this!

~~~
Timothee
I had this idea too a few months ago. I had looked at lenticular sheets and
other things but stopped thinking about it eventually, not sure why. (except
for the fact that is what I usually do: I have an idea, think about it for a
little bit, look at how it could be done and stop there :))

I think it was a combination of the price of the individual sheets (on Amazon
at least) and the need for a high quality printer and assembly (the print and
the lenticular sheet need to be perfectly aligned). I was imagining a cheap
service to get memes into magnets for your fridge but the prices seemed not to
match this vision. Working with artists like this site is doing is definitely
a great idea. I had started trying to find a local printer but I don't think I
found anybody fast enough for me not to move on to a different idea.

Great work!

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highphive
Awesome idea at a pretty reasonable price. Regarding the video... they might
want to invest in some acting lessons haha.

~~~
shashashasha
Yeah we are so bad at acting :)

We even knocked over our camera while filming the shot referencing the
BitBucket "Spooning" video:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/338114/gifs/by_me/kickst...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/338114/gifs/by_me/kickstarter_outtake.gif)
reference:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYBjVTMUQY0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYBjVTMUQY0)

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nthitz
It would be cool if the user could pick the 10 frames out of the gif rather
than requiring 10 sequential frames!

~~~
PavlovsCat
With CSS transforms and javascript, it might be possible to make some kind of
in-browser preview of the final result even!

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kkshin
How far is the technology from being able to do this on textiles? That would
be sick.

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recycleme
Ok, now just combine that with t-shirts (g-shirts).

edit: awesome idea btw!

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roywiggins
This looks fantastic. I make gifs out of pictures I take on burst mode and
these would be beyond perfect for presenting them. (try it at a party, it's
much more fun than static pictures, also for posed group shots)

I'm waiting for flexible color solar-powered wireless e-ink displays to give
the full "Harry Potter" moving-picture effect, but they're a few years out!

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BSeward
This is super cool. I've looked a little at lenticular printing for 3D prints
but sourcing the lenses was a little more effort than I needed. I'd pay well
over material cost to have someone else handle assembling. If you add an
option meant for that I'd be all over it.

~~~
shashashasha
Thanks! What do you mean about adding an option for 3D prints? Do you mean
doing the layering on our end? We could get you viewing angles and such so
that you could upload prelayered imagery through the website normally, would
that work?

~~~
BSeward
Layering on your end, yeah.

Per pages like
[http://www.microlens.com/pages/choosing_right_lens.htm](http://www.microlens.com/pages/choosing_right_lens.htm)
different applications prefer different viewing angles.

If you can track down ideal lenses and give tips for capturing ideal photos
that'd be awesome.

[http://poppy3d.com/](http://poppy3d.com/) is cute product shipping soon: they
might be interested in partnering (they've had ~2900 backers on Kickstarter)

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judk
Explain what lenticular is on the home page, and maybe show a photo of an
actual example?

~~~
shashashasha
That's great feedback. The first image is an actual example of a gif card at
work (hovering plays the animation), and the third link is an explanation of
lenticular printing. We should make it more clear though!

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jypepin
Omg this is an amazing idea! I love gifs so much, I will definitely try this
out!

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HyprMusic
This is very cool. Is there any particular reason why non-GIF version is
limited to just 2 pictures? It would be awesome to be able to manually upload
a number of images, especially with phones supporting burst mode.

~~~
shashashasha
We'd love to offer manual upload of a sequence of images, we just don't want
people to get the idea that they can upload 10 unique images. With lenticular
sheets at this high framecount there's always some ghosting, so it's really
for motion (gifs+video) or flipping between a couple distinct images (flip)

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thebiglebrewski
Hey, this is a great idea! Are you going to put out an API for this?

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goldenkey
You should elaborate on whether you mean an affiliate API or something else.
An API means nothing when the subject is a user-catered service

~~~
thebiglebrewski
Ok sure, let me elaborate. Will you have an API where I'll be able to send a
request with a gif and an address to send it to, similar to lob?

~~~
shashashasha
Hi! Yes, we are planning on having a way to integrate with Gifpop. We're
talking to a few gif app makers and hopefully will have something put together
soon!

(for the interested, we're currently built on node and express, which has been
really great for prototyping and building out new endpoints that require lots
of processing. our previous website, [http://meshu.io](http://meshu.io), was
built on python/django)

~~~
thebiglebrewski
Awesome! Thanks for your answer. Looking forward to that.

~~~
shashashasha
Yes thanks! If you have a specific usecase, please feel free to email
omg@gifpop.io and we'll let you know when we have more information!

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yefim
This is awesome. Definitely has a Harry Potter feel to it. Love it!

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nakedrobot2
You have no pricing whatsoever on your site. I had to upload a gif just to see
the prices. This is probably not ideal. I'd suggest adding a pricing page :)

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jl6
How good can this tech get? Could you print an ultra-high dpi image, put
ultra-fine lenses over it, and turn it very slowly to get several minutes of
video?

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wnevets
I wish I would of though of this, pretty clever idea.

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ntaylor
Getting errors when I attempt to upload an image in Chrome (and IE).

Uncaught SecurityError: Access to 'localStorage' is denied for this document.

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awongh
also just found out about [http://meshu.io](http://meshu.io) through this-
also a great idea!

~~~
shashashasha
Thanks! Meshu was our first project together, and we built it on
Python/Django. It's been really fun and kind of crazy to have two projects
with holiday rushes at the same time :)

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garthdog
It'd be nice if I could upload 10 PNG files so as to not be bound by the 256
color limitation of GIFs.

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lubujackson
WHY OH WHY are there no Internet meme samples? I'd think Dramatic Chipmunk
would be a shoo-in.

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bigtech
Super cool. Wondering if the prices are the same for original art as for the
artist generated works.

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duiker101
is that my hackertyper that I see there? :D

~~~
shashashasha
YES OH MY GOD! We tried to reference a lot of our favorite memes and things in
the video. Glad you caught it!

~~~
duiker101
I love the fact that people still use it ^^ Thanks for that you really made my
day!

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andersthue
Can they do animated ascii art too?

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wehadfun
put this on etsy

