How we open sourced Instagram

by lallouz • 14 years ago

49 21 14 years ago

Mizza2• 14 years ago

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!

zmitri4• 14 years ago

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

Mizza2• 14 years ago

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.

tomconte• 14 years ago

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

zmitri4• 14 years ago

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."

brown9-2• 14 years ago

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

wylie2• 14 years ago

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

reidrac• 14 years ago

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

memnips2• 14 years ago

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.

Semiapies• 14 years ago

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

memnips2• 14 years ago

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.

SandersAK4• 14 years ago

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 :)

marginalboy2• 14 years ago

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

SandersAK4• 14 years ago

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!

upinsmoke• 14 years ago

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

wylie2• 14 years ago

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.

How we open sourced Instagram

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