
Show HN: Screely – Instantly turn screenshots into beautiful images - 0verAchiever
https://www.screely.com/
======
archagon
This looks like a great idea, so good work. Looking forward to seeing how it
develops in the future.

Tangentially, though, I'd love to know how such a simple, half-functional, and
clearly proof-of-concept site can garner _almost a thousand_ upvotes on
ProductHunt?! I've submitted substantially more complex (and finished)
products in the past that have only gotten 5-40 upvotes and like 2 comments a
pop. Is it a matter of getting an influencer to post it for you? Does wip.chat
help with this? I find it utterly bizarre.

(Yes, I'm jelly.)

~~~
0verAchiever
>Tangentially, though, I'd love to know how such a simple, half-functional,
and clearly proof-of-concept site can garner almost a thousand upvotes on
ProductHunt?! I've submitted substantially more complex (and finished)
products in the past that have only gotten 5-40 upvotes and like 2 comments a
pop.

As the others have stated, complexity does not equal value to the user. I
think that the simplicity is exactly what people like about it. It doesn't try
to do everything, it only does one thing and that makes it easy to use and
easy to understand the value proposition.

People on PH and HN are very tolerant of MVP's and understand they won't
function perfectly and not have many features. It only does one thing and it
does it well in 95% of the cases.

>Is it a matter of getting an influencer to post it for you? Does wip.chat
help with this? I find it utterly bizarre.

There is no secret to doing well during your launch (or at least, not that I
know of), but it's a combination of lots of smaller variables (timing, luck,
optimizing your post and more). As you can see I hunted Screely myself from a
relatively new account so I don't think this plays a role.

You are not allowed to ask for upvotes so wip.chat does not help in this way.
There are plenty of products that came out of wip.chat that did not do well at
all.

However, I think there is a huge amount of value in being part of a community
of makers/developers/designers. I have gotten feedback from others during
development, they helped me when I got stuck with programming issues and they
gave me tips for how I should launch. Wip chat will not magically make your
launch do well but it will help you make a product than can do well on it's
own.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
> I think that the simplicity is exactly what people like about it.

I totally agree. I know there's a bitchy comment on the PH about it 'not doing
enough', but I think that's ridiculous: your tool is designed to solve one
specific task, and it appears to do that very well, so please concentrate on
small, incremental polish rather than totally changing the nature of it!

------
0verAchiever
I regularly want to share what I've worked on with others on Twitter or
Slack/Telegram.

However, sharing a simple screenshot always was a bit too bland for my
taste... I wanted to make it look better. Give it a background, put it in a
fake window with some shadows etc.

You can do this in Photoshop or Sketch with some templates but that takes a
lot of time if you just quickly want to share something with friends or
coworkers.

That's why I build Screely. With Screely you can instantly generate a
beautiful image from a simple screenshot without needing to dive into
Photoshop or Sketch first.

Upload an image, choose your background color and hit that download button so
you can share it with others.

I have many more features I want to add like gradient backgrounds, ability to
generate an image without the fake window, adjusting the padding and size and
much more customization options. But I first wanted to ship the MVP and get
some feedback from others and hear their opinions.

PS. I only started to learn programming pretty recently so if you find a bug
or something weird. Let me know and I'll try to fix it as fast as possible!

~~~
dingaling
> I wanted to make it look better. Give it a background, put it in a fake
> window with some shadows etc.

Interesting, I'm the complete opposite. When I make or receive a screenshot I
want to crop down to the focal point.

One of the best IT investments ${BIGCORP} made when I worked for them was to
install SnagIt on every user's machine. Suddenly their documents had neat,
inline cropped screenshots instead of huge one-per-page full-screen dumps.
Saving in storage costs alone must have paid for that deployment.

And our bug reports became much easier to triage since the users just included
an image of the problematic field, instead of the whole screen with a comment
'see error'. Where?!

~~~
0verAchiever
Reporting bugs and sharing designs on social media or in chat with friends or
co-workers are very different use cases though. Screely is aimed at making the
latter easier, SnagIt fixed the first one for you.

------
null0pointer
On mac: <CMD> \+ <Shift> \+ <4> then pressing <space> will allow you to select
a window for screenshot which includes the window border, title, and
transparent shadow.

~~~
cygned
Hold <option> while clickling the window to remove the shadow.

Hold <control> while clicking to skip the desktop and copy it to the clipboard
directly.

~~~
sarreph
Never ceases to amaze me the options (no pun intended) that OS X developers
put hidden in the simplest of system apps. Makes them so versatile.

I remember as a stupid middle-schooler thinking I was being cool showing
everyone how many <option>/<control>/<cmd> key combos there are to take the
perfect PhotoBooth shot.

PSA: Reminder – option click _everything_ for nice surprises.

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perk
Looks useful, congrats on the launch!. One thing, since the page says you're
not uploading images to your server(s) - you might want to rename the "Upload
the screenshot" button to something that reflects that. Good luck!

~~~
0verAchiever
Hadn't even thought about that!

Replacing it by something like 'insert' does not feel accurate either but I'm
not a native english speaker. Is there any synonym to 'upload' or 'insert'
that would make more sense in this case and make it clear that everything is
handled client-side?

~~~
boaticus
Yeah, I think “Select Your Screenshot” or “Choose Your Screenshot” would be
great options.

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Twisell
I might be old school but it always seems very dubious for me to rely on a web
server controled by who the f... know for such basic task that can be done
more efficiently offline.

And also why is it free? Can we be sure the service won’t store every image
send? Would be a nice way to gather free real word training example for a
neural network so it can learn what frame contain nothing useful and what
frame contain login/password. Because we can be sure that someone WILL send
out login/password while network protocol will gladly be giving their good old
IP adresse along...

~~~
hartator
That’s oddly specific, I am sure you have 100x better way to harvest
passwords. Like run a free proxy server.

~~~
Twisell
It depends on what is your target. No enterprise will tolerate that their
employees set up a proxy (and even so clever employees are not the target).

However I’ve seen a lot of people using free web based tool to replace pretty
basic dumb stuff such as assembling pdf.

Would’nt it be nice for a concurrent company to buy all pdf assembled by your
employees using this web service based on company IP?

Of course nerd might find out that pdf is uploaded (most probably however he
will use offline FOSS solution because he know better). But the basic employee
that use this « because someone send them a link to this awesome tool » will
never even thought of it...

I have no proof this scheme is used by scammers, but it seems highly plausible
to me.

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leetbulb
OSX/macOS has already been doing this for me for quite some time. I always try
to frame my screenshots to look fairly "presentable." E.g.:
[https://i.imgur.com/rozu1Do.png](https://i.imgur.com/rozu1Do.png)

Edit: I figure my comment probably comes off a bit negative. I think this is a
cool service and I would likely use it if there were an API available. Props
to coming up with a neat little app to develop and bring to the
public...simple ideas like this are hard to come by and stick to.

~~~
0verAchiever
Thanks for your clarification. MacOS might solve your need for making
screenshots look presentable but there are still many situations where it
doesn't solve the problem (e.g. only showing a small section of a page instead
of the full window, people using Windows/Ubuntu or mobile devices). That's
what I am aiming to solve with Screely.

I also want to add many more features to Screely that MacOS can't do such as
gradient backgrounds, custom image backgrounds with company logo, tweet this
image and much more.

------
danenania
This is great! I've wasted so much time in the past doing this manually in
Sketch.

We're planning to release some major features for EnvKey[1] over the next few
weeks, and so we'll be putting a lot of new screenshots up on the marketing
site. I look forward to giving it a run through at that point and hopefully
saving lots of time. I'm happy to give feedback on the process. Congrats on
making something useful!

1 - [https://www.envkey.com](https://www.envkey.com)

~~~
0verAchiever
Thank you, I'm glad to like it!

Looking forward to seeing the new screenshots. If you run into any problems or
have feedback, just send me a message.

------
gbajson
I am trying to figure out what's the value of this additional fake window
around the screenshot. Could you describe any valid use case, please?

~~~
ebj73
I was thinking the same, but I think it's mainly for prototyping. You have a
design that will eventually end up inside a window frame, and you want to show
how it might look, before it's actually implemented. I hope that's the
purpose.

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ktpsns
Am I the only one who prefers the "naked" screenshot
([https://www.screely.com/img/before3.png](https://www.screely.com/img/before3.png))
over the one with gimmicks?
([https://www.screely.com/img/after3.png](https://www.screely.com/img/after3.png))

The gimmicks blow up the file size (especially when/if they add an alpha
channel only for the shadow) and don't look better in every scenario.

I think such decoration should be applied when neccessary, for instance with
CSS within a website.

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kuczmama
This is really awesome! I will definitely use this. Congratulations on the
launch :D Do you plan on allowing someone to add a text overlay in the future?
That would really help. I really want to make screenshots that look kind of
like this: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/shopify-app-
store/61a672cfd4a83c1ba...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/shopify-app-
store/61a672cfd4a83c1bac075d69847cd757/screenshot/41007/original.png)

~~~
0verAchiever
Thank you, glad to hear you will use it!

There are no plans for adding text overlay in the immediate future but I will
keep your suggestion in mind for future development.

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code_duck
I thought this meant the opposite – I often take screenshots on my phone and
wish to trim the screen decorations before sharing.

------
fb03
At those "done feature list" you should add:

\- tray icon enabled native app for all big three

Nothing would make this stick faster than just having to press a key combo
(like we already do in Windows with alt+prtscr) and have it pop an image link
in front of me to paste/use wherever I want.

~~~
Jaruzel
The trouble with native apps is that unless you open source, no-one trusts
them anymore.

I have 100's of small tools a bit like Screenly et al., that I have written
over the years for Windows, but because I wont open source them, people just
wont download them, so there's no point releasing.

We're in a really sad place now software-wise, where all the little developers
(like me) can no longer release freeware or shareware without someone accusing
it of being riddled with malware.

------
dsnuh
Nice work, and congratulations! I have a suggestion for you: create a Slack
plugin, so you can type /screely and then a URL (or even cooler, if you could
drag and drop) and it returns a converted image you can choose to post, a la
/gifs plugin.

~~~
0verAchiever
Thank you! Have gotten a couple of similar requests already so it seems like
people want to make it easier to integrate this into one's workflow.

If that's a Slack plugin, browser extension or something I don't know yet but
I'm definitely going to focus on this area in future development of the
product.

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kowdermeister
Fancy feature request: Let me change the OS to even retro ones, like Win95 or
OS/2 :)

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kroltan
Windows does that natively, with Alt+PrintScreen.

Some Linux distros also support that out of the box.

~~~
adtac
Apologies for the pedantry in advance, but Linux distros probably don't
support that. It's the desktop manager / window manager doing that for you.

~~~
kroltan
You are absolutely correct. I actually was going to write WM, but then I
realized that it might be incorrect, I didn't actually know if it was the WM
or additional software. So I said the distros do it, since it would be
inaccurate but not incorrect.

------
jmarcher
Cool stuff!

I built this much more limited Chrome extension to save our designer's sanity
(from frequent requests from marketing) a few years ago. Works well enough.

[https://jmartin.ca/screenshot-chrome/](https://jmartin.ca/screenshot-chrome/)
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/standardized-
scree...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/standardized-
screenshot/pabdhaakclnechgfhmnhkcbmjobeoope)

~~~
rahimnathwani
Thanks. But this doesn't work for me :( Even in incognito mode with no other
extensions enabled, I get this error:

"For best results, don’t mouse over the page during capture and set “Actual
Size” from the “View” menu. Your finished image will open in a new window.

Uh oh, something went wrong! Try reloading the page and running this again."

In case you're interested, I'm running Chrome on Linux. chrome://version says
'64.0.3282.186 (Official Build) (64-bit)'

------
riquito
Congratulations on the release.

In "Coming Soon", do the lines with strikethrough mean that the feature has
been implemented or removed from the plans?

~~~
0verAchiever
Thank you!

The strikethrough means the feature has been implemented and I'm working on
the next one.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
A green tick or similar alongside each item (in addition to the strikethrough,
I think) would probably convey positivity less ambiguously. (FWIW, I
understood it to mean 'feature has been implemented', but that's clearly not
everyone's experience!)

------
ebj73
I first thought that the idea was to lend "fake credibility" to an image, by
making it seem like the output from an application.

But I guess the main idea must be prototyping, and to show off how a
particular design might look in the end, once implemented as part of an
application.

------
basseq
Killer feature of all screenshot webapps: paste. Meaning, I should be able to
paste an image on my clipboard to your app and have it generate. Snag.gy
([https://snag.gy/](https://snag.gy/)) does this well.

~~~
0verAchiever
This has been requested a lot after launching so will work in adding this in
the future.

Thanks for your feedback!

------
slig
Suggestion: an effect like the one Amazon uses on their blog/docs about AWS.
I'm on mobile now, but if you don't know what I'm talking about I'll find an
example.

~~~
0verAchiever
Do you mean something like this? [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-
iot-1-click-use-simple-...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-iot-1-click-
use-simple-devices-to-trigger-lambda-functions/)

The solid black border around the image?

~~~
slig
No, I mean the effect shown on these [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-
aurora-backtrack-tur...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-aurora-
backtrack-turn-back-time/) notice the effect can appear on any and every
border.

------
Mandatum
I don't see any fake window? Has that been disabled?

~~~
0verAchiever
It has definitely not been disabled! Could you tell me what browser and OS you
are using?

~~~
genezeta
Happening here too; on Firefox/Win10.

Something that seems unrelated is that, in your drawWindow function you seem
to be assigning an onload handler and then immediately overwriting it with a
different onload handler. This is not really the problem, but I mention it
just so you know.

Now, the actual problem seems to be there's a long standing bug in Firefox
where it won't draw SVG to neither canvas nor Image elements if they don't
have a proper width and height set (and it seems it has to be pixel based, a
percentage width/height won't work either). I've just tried adding it to the
<svg> template string you have in drawWindow and it does seem to solve the
problem.

~~~
0verAchiever
Thank you for letting me know and also looking into it!!

Was able to quickly fix this issue thanks to you! I've just pushed the fix to
production so it should be fixed now. Would you mind testing it one more time
to check if it works?

~~~
genezeta
Yes. It works now :)

~~~
0verAchiever
Good to hear! :D

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perk
What about «Select your Screenshot»?

~~~
perk
Gah, my prev comment was placed wrong (fat fingers on the phone)

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adrow
Have you thought about integrating with Sharex?

~~~
0verAchiever
I think we spoke earlier about this on Drift, but just to be sure you get a
reply if that was someone else..

I don't have any immediate plan for integrating with Sharex but I am thinking
about making a chrome extensions to make it easier to integrate into your
workflow. So you can immediately open a new screenshot in Screely.

Will keep your suggestion in mind for future development!

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mcintyre1994
This is a really cool use of canvas, nice! :)

~~~
0verAchiever
Thank you. It's been fun learning about <canvas> and doing everything client-
side!

