Show HN: Stable Diffusion print-on-demand apparel

https://www.1sewn.com/

by mox111 • 4 years ago

49 51 4 years ago

Hey HN,

Obviously we are experiencing a surge of stable-diffusion based apps at the moment, but I have yet to see anyone try and map the outputs onto actual physical products that can be delivered to your door.

I wanted to make it easy to:

- pick an artistic style

- hit 'record' and speak into your phone / tablet / desktop or whatever, and describe the kind of design you want your clothing to have (since speaking is more spontaneous that typing)

- swipe among a variety of mockups (t-shirts, hoodies etc.) featuring your design, and order it to your door with the click of a button

The product is called 1SEWN. Fulfilment is currently achieved using a print-on-demand service called Printful (https://www.printful.com) that I have integrated with.

If you guys would like to try it, I would love some feedback. Shipping is currently limited to outside Europe, but even if you are in Europe, your feedback about the whole UX would be much appreciated!

Much love,

Matt

RootKitBeerCat• 4 years ago

Add the ability to write a text prompt; accessibility wise - not everyone speaks the same or can be understood by basic speech to text

dmd• 4 years ago

Yup. After 6 attempts it still couldn't understand me. And I'm a native english speaker, grew up in the US northeast, and nobody would accuse me of having any sort of non-US-broadcast-standard accent.

ben_w• 4 years ago

And some of us just plain don't want to use voice interfaces.

prepend3• 4 years ago

I don’t mind using them, but this one doesn’t work. It makes for some comical images but this is not an effective voice prompt.

r-zip2• 4 years ago

Why do you need microphone access? Can't you use text instead? I'm not giving mic access to some random website.

aliqot• 4 years ago

they just said because you can speak the prompt. kids these days dont want to use their hands, that's for babies.

https://youtu.be/KMy1zO8m8sM

r-zip2• 4 years ago

I saw that. Not exactly a great reason.

wyck• 4 years ago

Really, really bad idea to use force using microphone. Unreal.

prepend3• 4 years ago

Perhaps it’s just a honeypot to capture some voices of hacker news readers.

I’m now suspicious whenever someone has a stupid tool that the real purpose is to train some model with the input.

pvg3• 4 years ago

Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives. When someone is learning, help them learn more.

When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is, but don't be gratuitously negative.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

snovv_crash3• 4 years ago

The alternative here is pretty obvious - a text box.

Retr0id• 4 years ago

IMHO, anyone who enjoys entering text via speech already uses it as a feature of their operating system (I know android and iOS both have dictation buttons). Most people don't use these features however, for good reason.

I wanted to try it out, but unfortunately I don't even have a microphone on my current device.

I just want to see some example prompt/output combinations!

AkshatJ27• 4 years ago

I expected it to somehow fill the entire shirt, but apparently it just makes a rectangular patch of the image on a plain black/white shirt. Also, the speech to text doesn't seem to do that well.

cercatrova2• 4 years ago

The rectangle is probably a limitation of the t shirt printer service they're using, I've also seen that they don't usually fill the entire shirt.

ipaddr• 4 years ago

They could print on the entire shirt as that is an option when they setup the store but the profit margin would make it too expensive for a third-party.

omarfarooq• 4 years ago

That would require the more involved 'cut and sew' process.

pinum• 4 years ago

What's the reason for the "everywhere except Europe" shipping? I'm guessing some legal/regulatory thing, but would be curious to know the details.

zwog2• 4 years ago

As stated in the original post printing and shipping is handled by https://www.printful.com/ and they offer their services in Europe.

I assume it has something to do with copyright regulations in Europe or similar?

snovv_crash3• 4 years ago

GDPR maybe if the microphone data is saved?

prepend3• 4 years ago

The input does not do speech to text well. I would like to use this service. Let me type my prompt.

I tried 5 times and every time it messed up what I said. My os has a good speech to text tool and I would use that if I wanted to talk a prompt.

The site is cool and it’s a neat idea, but forcing microphone use is weird and ineffective.

nbzso• 4 years ago

We are living in the future. In the next iteration, I expect direct connection from my Neuralink to the Creative gods of AI Metaverse. Why speak at all. This is for babies.:)

systemicdanna3• 4 years ago

Not giving microphone access unless it’s something _I_ need, not the website.

Would be great if you could add text input as an alternative to voice input.

sungam• 4 years ago

Great idea - I actually did this manually already by generating an image and uploading to vistaprint. One thing I noticed was that it’s hard to generate images with no background so you could consider automatic background removal as a value add over the standard image generation algorithm.

jdjslskshdj• 4 years ago

Taking fast fashion to a whole new level. Depressing.

antiterra2• 4 years ago

This isn’t inherently fast fashion, and on-demand shirt printing isn’t a new thing. I had a cafepress t-shirt I used for ~10 years and only got rid of it because I lost weight.

zwog2• 4 years ago

You have denied audio permission. If you want, you can always go to your 'settings' and allow it to fully experience this site

Weird phrasing. If I don't want to I can't experience the site at all.

antiterra2• 4 years ago

An app being confusingly passive is the blinking 12:00 display of our time.

soheil2• 4 years ago

map the outputs onto actual physical products

But wouldn't that be more like an actual 3D printed cat instead of a picture of a cat on a t-shirt?

cercatrova2• 4 years ago

For those that want a text box, I've used https://thisshirtexists.com, works well.

Insane that OP's site works with audio and only audio. I mean, who thought the more complicated way to enter text should be not only the default, but the only option at all?

brookst• 4 years ago

Presumably they’re working on an alternative using device accelerometers to allow Morse code input.

soheil2• 4 years ago

Shipping is currently limited to outside Europe

So you ship to North Korea but not Germany? Got it.

appleflaxen• 4 years ago

Having a voice recognition interface for something I could type (more accurately) in 10 seconds is very off-putting. I don't use Siri for a reason.

hahamrfunnyguy• 4 years ago

The idea of using stable diffusion to create a t-shirt is compelling, but the execution here leaves a lot to be desired.

Randomly, I picked the stencil style and went for "Man with beard base jumping from the Eiffel tower." It produced one really poor image. It wasn't stenciled looking at all.

Next I went for pop art and used the prompt "Frog riding a motorcycle". The art style looked like something that an 8 year old would draw, not Andy Warhol (which I believe is the artist in your screenshot).

So I think you have some work to do in taking the inputs from the user and crafting them into better SD prompts that generate outputs that look like t-shirt artwork and in the styles they're supposed to be. I'd also drop the voice prompt support, no added value here. Definitely would prefer to type it on my computer and mobile keyboards already have a voice-input button.

mdaEyebot• 4 years ago

It's easier to get good results by generating 2-8 images for each prompt, picking the best result, using that as the starting point for a new run.

Tweak the parameters of how close the new image should be to the old one and the prompts, tweak the prompts to address problem areas in the image, generate another 2-8. Rinse and repeat until you have something decent.

I doubt that the really impressive SD images are coming from submitting a prompt once and taking that output. It's better than past open-source efforts like the mini dall-es, but it also still has a way to go before it can reliably produce good results on its own.

AI art on products is an interesting idea, but personally I would use a more fully-featued SD web UI to generate the image locally.

robflynn2• 4 years ago

This is one of those things where op needs to do something similar to what I think midjourney is doing and do prompt optimization.

They need to do some research into what additional prompt cues they can add for the user automatically to bring the user's prompt quality up.

They can append these to the prompt behind the scenes or provide a second text input of the additional prompt data to allow the user to modify that separately from their initial prompt input.

It might even help the user better understand how styling works with prompts.

systemicdanna3• 4 years ago

Many complained about voice-only input. I want to highlight a few other aspects that could be improved:

1. Navigation doesn’t work. Sometimes swiping right goes to the next page, sometimes doesn’t. Then you are stuck on the 3rd page and can’t go back.

2. What are points? I have 5 points, got to the payment step - the T-shirt is $25. How am I supposed to use points?

3. The T-shirt that is displayed as a 3D background is completely different from the low quality generic fit design at the end. This discrepancy is off-putting.

4. The tiny final print is unintelligible on my phone. Some squiggles and circles that I can’t make sense of at this resolution/zoom level.

I think the idea of custom fashion is interesting, but this implementation doesn’t feel empowering at all. Feels limiting and gimmicky. More importantly, the result - a generic T-shirt with a very small print is not fashionable or even attractive.

karaterobot• 4 years ago

I have no microphone attached to my computer, so I can't use your AI to order a t-shirt. What a weird sentence.

demarq• 4 years ago

Please note at this early stage we only offer shipping to countries outside of Europe.

Don't you mean inside?

fxtentacle2• 4 years ago

Probably due to EU tax law. I did the same when I was using Printful with a German company. Shipping to the US is cheap and tax free, shipping to the EU is annoying.

robflynn2• 4 years ago

You're going to get sued in the US if you try to market this thing and require voice input. This is potentially a huge accessibility issue.

You've essentially eliminated (most) people who are deaf and people with speech issues from being able to use your product.

It's a neat idea and the design looks like it could be nice but I can't really get past the first page because I cannot use it (no mic attached to this device and I wouldn't want to grant you permission to it anyway.)

fxtentacle2• 4 years ago

This reminds me of my failed business idea https://indivicia.com/

The problem with printed shirts is that everyone expects them to be cheap-ish. And the Printful quality is low enough that people were upset at a $50 price point. The only tshirts that sell for higher prices are branded ones, e.g. with Marvel characters on them. But then you're effectively selling copyright infringement as a service. And your profit margins will be low overall because Printful and their shipping are rather expensive.

In the end, and with external help, I then acquired and ran https://meowbikinis.com/ for a while. Profit margins were insanely better. Until the lockdowns in China started and the last leftovers of my stock spoiled inside a rented fulfillment center...

m88m2• 4 years ago

have to say - meowbikinis is super interesting story. Can you share a bit more about it?

systemicdanna3• 4 years ago

An important question to ask yourself before you launch a product: when you look at the final result, do you personally think that it delivers on your value prop? If you don't think so, then users, who are often more critical, definitely won't either.

"you don't have to be a fashion designer or graphic artist to create amazing clothes that express your personality. Whether you want to print a simple design or something more complex, 1SEWN makes it easy and affordable to get the perfect item, every time"

Do you think a generic white T-shirt with a small print of a low artistic quality is really expressing anyone's personality? Or that it looks like a "perfect item"?

d23• 4 years ago

Cool idea, but my first and only attempt returned "something went wrong".

m88m2• 4 years ago

Sorry, someone already did it https://www.thisshirtexists.com/ Related HN launch https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33082472

mpaepper• 4 years ago

Thanks for the mentions everyone. I've already launched text2shirt some weeks ago - no need for audio, online and serving shirts and hoodies:

www.thisshirtexists.com

agtsmith• 4 years ago

Hey Matt ... would like to connect if you are still monitoring this thread.

Show HN: Stable Diffusion print-on-demand apparel

Related Stories