San Rafael, California-based Graphita wants to let people add a little bling to their photos.
The company offers a Flash-based application that enables users to upload photos and add a personal touch via an easy to use toolset filled with stamps, text icons, captions, bubbles and more (Bubbleply does much the same for videos). The Graphita rich toolkit is easy to use to add, resize and customize each addition to a photo creation. The product is simplified for the masses and offers users the option of an authenticated or anonymous experience – thus positioning itself for higher adoption rates. Currently, Graphita is in closed beta and does not appear to support the addition of animated icons which might be something worth looking into implementing before its official launch in mid-May.
Upon customizing a photo, users can share them via email, print and send them back to their favorite photo sites (Flickr, MySpace, etc.), or even send them to photo pick-up locations (Costco, Walgreens, etc.). In addition, photo creations can be placed directly on consumer products like coffee mugs, tee shirts or other items. Graphita does not appear to offer its own social networking hooks but rather leverages existing products and services. However, registered users have the option to share uploaded photos in the public gallery or keep them private.
In the coming months Graphita is looking to further integrate with existing products so that users can have quick access to the Graphita toolset from their favorite online photo product. Competitors to Graphita include PikiPimp and Comeeko who both offer photo annotations. Of course, larger online photo products like AOL Pictures, Flickr and PhotoBucket could develop and add similar features right into their products, thus squashing Graphita chances for web annotation domination.
Editor’s Note: Frank Gruber writes Somewhat Frank, is the co-founder of TECH cocktail and is a product manager at AOL. He is pictured below along with fellow AOL’er Orli Yakuel.
Comments
useless web app…
Serves a purpose. Not something I would be interested in.
What’s Hot Today.com
Great picture to use with the link to webtech who just got a digg on Google story :>
looks like a fun app!
yes bob. here is more about orli yakuel and techcrunch. i am surprised they are not trying harder to keep the webtech digg account secret. it will be banned when it is found out
http://valleywag.com/tech/geek.....234289.php
What would make this really big would be to provide a mobile-enabled service.
The concept seems to be an on-line version of a service which was/is popular in Japan with the younger generation called Purikura, photo booths (often big enough for two or more people) with the ability to customize images with frames and icons and such and print out a bunch of photo stickers are common in game arcades and the like. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purikura)
The whole concept of purikura was to share the small photo stickers with friends, young kids had a whole bunch of the plastered on everything from diaries (to create a sort of real “friends list” with photos, prempting that features which is so pervasive on SNS profiles) to mobile phones, part of a personalization culture.
In fact, Atlus, which was one of the creators (along with Sega) of the original Purikura machines have an on-line service for mobile phones in Japan.
You can also get purikura format (sticky backed) paper for use with your PC and imaging software, but it is no doubt a hassle for non-PC savvy people to get that up and running.
Microformat portable printers (some potentially integrated into phones) - think something like Zink which was demoed at Demo07- may trigger another evolution of the Purikura phenomenon.
What may seem rather tacky on large format photos seems less so on small sized photos, especially if they can be easily printed out and distributed.
I don’t think it’s as good as some of the digital scrapbooking softwares out there (although they are mostly desktop apps).
Another application related to photo. Application like fotowoosh & Graphita will really attract school goers. It is mainly for fun
http://www.suggestusability.com
@fukumimi
In the US, there is a company (GWHA) that has a mobile photo “blinging” service on Sprint’s network named PictureThis: http://www.gwha.com/PictureThis/PT_Gallery.php
What is different between using adobe photoshop at that personal graphic?
It could be helpful those people without adobe photoshop or similar software. Cannot see how it would be useful to me at the moment.
itasveer.com, which is an Indian service, has DoodlePad (http://www.itasveer.com/godoodle). Both anonymous and authenticated accesses are supported and the designs can be saved, reopened, edited and printed on mugs and t-shirts
Is this a business or a doo-dad? It smells like doo-dad.
@Gimshaw
A doo-dad for sure, but then there’s money in doo-dads for the MySpace crowd, witness the legions of image and slideshow services.
Just another doo-dadd. A ZingFu.com rip-off.
I’ve always thought that photos on the Internet just weren’t annoying enough, so this is a company I am very interested in.
The technology behind it is nice, but the only good I see coming from this service is deliberately making horrible things for comedy.
Oh, that looks neat.
I’ll have to take a look at it.
This is the weakest thing shown on techcrunch in atleast 2 weeks.
- TC are you really? investing your blog time? in this?
-RB
We did some work for PhotoCrank, a company that does something similar but from mobile phones. Send a picture message to their service and it will return the image with an overlay specific to a code you use or PhotoCrank email address you sent it to.
You can try it by sending a pic message to try@photocrank.com. Check out their website to find more designs. They even have some that let you add custom wording (thought bubbles, etc) based on the message in the txt.
http://www.photocrank.com
It’s not life altering, but it can be pretty fun.
I got PikiPimp-ed recently
If you’ve paid for any number of mega-pixels in your digital camera and you want to make a few changes to your pictures, this is a really easy way to get what you want quickly without a PhD in photo retouching.
Several innovations involved here:
Print resolution images editable in real-time on the web.
Drag and drop ease of use for commonly used effects you would have to spend hours drawing in a tool-based program like Photoshop.
Easy to get pictures into community sites and back to your desktop. No one else is doing this at print resolution…and besides, talent for drawing is optional.
If you go to the site, you can register for the beta program: http://www.graphita.com
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