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Show HN: I made a online free tool to enhance and auto-crop your screenshots (socialscreenshots.com)

113 points by gabfrk ↗ HN
I'm Gab, a 29-year-old self-taught French developer.

I created SocialScreenshots to help me quickly create visuals for my social media and as there's a lot of similar tools, I wanted to release it for free !

Features Available: - Automatically crop your screenshots - Enhance your screenshots with our easy-to-use editor - Capture screenshot directly from website

Unlike similar tools, with SocialScreenshots: 1. You can use it for free forever without any watermark! 2. You don’t need to install anything. 3. You don’t even need to create an account. 4. All of the processing happens locally in your browser

51 comments

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joshstrange
Interesting, at first I thought this was a competitor to something like CleanShotX (which I love) but I still wanted to check it out, especially since it’s all in the browser so it’s cross platform. It serves a completely different use-case which I personally don’t need very often but have run into a few times.

Next time I need a hero image for a blog post or similar I’ll be sure try this tool out!

Congrats on shipping!

gabfrk
Thanks a lot for this feedback.

I plan to make a cross platform app to make the screenshot process easier like for CleanShotX.

spuz
I'm am confused as to what the tool does. Are there any examples? Ironically I couldn't see any screenshots on the homepage. Something like a before and after would be good.
gabfrk
Thanks for the feedback, I'll make it clearer in the homepage.
Zenzero
I don't have any helpful input other than to say that I know putting something you have worked on out into the public for the first time can be a stressful and frantic feeling. You sound like you are really on top of trying to address everyone's input. You're doing great.
pimlottc
Seconded, I need to see some examples before I'm going to upload any of my own images
Zenzero
... You can just upload a random image off the internet if you're that worried about it.
karmakaze
I'm also at a loss as to what this could do better than a quick shift-cmd-4 drag-rectangle. I crop before taking the shot. This would be like an app for photographers that don't frame their shots.

The most I can imagine is like a web scraper that finds the content and removes the no-scroll/ads junk.

Edit: I might be missing the point. AI will allow people to avoid thinking about how to communicate well and have the machine guess correctly x% of the time. Just a possible trend not specific to the app.

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B
I prefer CLI tools but this looks good. Actually too good to be true (free and local processing), what’s the catch?

2 details though: You should create a Mastodon account in addition to Twitter. And your LinkedIn account is here to "follow you," and if you refuse you can’t see your profile. Change that to a regular link. Also i can’t find a Gab Franck on LinkedIn which makes the link even more useless right now.

gabfrk
Hello thanks a lot for this feedbacks and advices.

I created this tool in order to start growing an indie dev community in order to make better launch for my main products, that's why it's free.

I'll change the link right now, my full name is Gabriel Franck.

delusional
If you really want to do this from the CLI, you should consider a simple SVG template that you replace an image embed URI into. This also lets you do cute attention drawing style markers with an accompanying text file and a for loop.

I do this for some how-to style documentation for work.

politelemon
You had me at #4. And 3. It's a fresh departure from many other tools that immediately require sign ups
gabfrk
Thanks a lot for your feedback !
heresjohnny
Nice work! Smooth and local. I like it. A tip: it doesn’t detect mobile screenshots (the frame remains in landscape, causing the image to be cut off).
gabfrk
Thanks a lot ! I'm currently working on a better UI/UX for phone
notpushkin
Looks neat, congrats on the launch!

FYI this link hijacks the back button. You might want to use history.replaceState() instead of a regular redirect.

gabfrk
Thanks for this feedback i'll try to fix it asap !
cerved
please do, it was very annoying
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roosmaa
Looks real nice! Would be nice, if in addition to drag & drop, pasting the screenshot from clipboard would also work.
gabfrk
Really nice idea. I'll add it in a few days !
hubraumhugo
You're doing exactly the right thing to kickstart your career as a dev/founder/indie maker: Building a small useful tool and launching it (that's the important part, many never get to this stage), seeking feedback, and improving based on it. This is the essence of the "build, measure, learn" methodology that every startup tries to apply.

In fact, my own startup wouldn't exist if I hadn't made a HN post with a crappy MVP and received feedback from founders, investors, and potential customers.

gabfrk
This is so encouraging to me and it means a lot. Thanks
RyanHamilton
Is there something like this but for desktop? e.g. take this screenshot of my desktop and show it projected onto: 1. A laptop monitor. 2. An ipad screen. 3. A giant TV screen in Times Square.
scrollaway
Quick feedback, it seems like png transparency is not handled: it creates a black background.

Good tool, good job!

bjelkeman-again
Nice!

When I try to crop an image I get a confirmation button that say “Valider” which isn’t a language in my browser (EN) or my country location (SE).

gabfrk
Thanks. I'm fixing it, should be up in a few minutes
underdeserver
Looks great! But please don't hijack my back button.
jb1991
Exactly. It’s so annoying when developers think they know better how a user should use their browser than the user does, at least that’s an optimistic interpretation of it. The other interpretation is that they just don’t want users to actually use their browser in any way that gets them off the page.
gabfrk
Sorry for that it was just a miss-use of <Navigate> component in React, and some lack of testing for the back button.

I'm working to fix it ASAP ;) !

Zak
I think the optimistic interpretation in 2024 is that the developer is using some Byzantine frontend framework they don't fully understand.
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padolsey
Cool! Feature req: a way to 3d-skew the screenshot.
gabfrk
Good idea ! I put it in my backlog
codetrotter
> a 29-year-old self-taught French developer

Which part is the self-taught part? :p

gabfrk
Haha. The "developper" part of course.

Pardon my french ;)

green-eclipse
Nice tool! Is there a simple way to format the image without a background, or just a transparent background?
gabfrk
Thanks! There's a Hack to do this. You can use the "imported" tab without importing any file as a background. The dowloaded result will be the card without any background.
green-eclipse
Ahh nice. If you can add a built-in transparent background that would be super helpful too. Thanks for the tool!
geor9e
I mean this in the most constructive way possible, and I am not a smart man, but this didn't enhance or auto-crop anything. All it appears to do is slap the image onto a gradient wallpaper. Why? I don't see any possible use or utility for this website. https://i.imgur.com/bADwvcb.png
uxcolumbo
Not sure how to use this. I'm on Firefox.

- I select the take screenshots button.

- Then I need to give permission.

- Then I select the window I want to take a screenshot from.

- What then?

Anyway, congrats on launching!

You should add your contact details to your HN profile.

gabfrk
Thanks a lot for the feedback! On firefox the take screenshots button may not work as intended. You should have confirmation tab and then your screenshot should appear in the original tab.

If its not working you can still make a screenshots as usual and use the app to generate a image with your screenshot on a beautiful background.

I updated it with my X Twitter account thanks for the advice, I'm kinda new here. Wish I knew that before.

AbstractH24
I love this!

Don't see myself having a ton of use cases all that often, but its really cool.

If you wanted to make it more useful for me then one of two thins would have to happen: 1. Need to work on mobile devices. 2. Do recordings rather than just screenshots.