pbl24
New Contributor
So, in effort of staying lean, I would like to get some feedback surrounding an idea that I've had for a while before jumping head first into it. The idea arose out of scratching my own itch.
ImageFly - Ridiculously Easy Image Editing API
What? ImageFly is a an API that you, as a developer, can leverage while building out your applications to handle the monotonous tasks of manipulating images. For example, normally, you need to do stuff when a user uploads a photo, such as create a thumbnail, resize it to a common width, change the quality (to ensure a sane filesize), and perhaps strip all the photo metadata information.
Why? As of now, the only ways to handle this is language dependent, and normally overcomplicated (e.g., GD in PHP, RMagick in Ruby, etc.). An additional way is to install something like ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick and make system calls (or use complicated wrappers) to these applications. While powerful, the downside of this approach is that these applications are insanely complex, and it's not necessarily as straight forward how to do something simple.
The fact of the matter is, you should be focused on building out YOUR application, and not spending hours trying to get your photo infrastructure perfect.
How does it benefit you?
Three simple benefits for you:
You don't have to learn complex image libraries. More often than not, all you need to do is resize an image or create thumbnails. Why bother learning complex image libraries when you don't have to? ImageFly abstracts all the goo away and allows you to handle all the basic functionality in a simple and concise API call.
Cut down on your development time. Less code equals less maintenance. Cut complex image manipulation out of your development cycle and let ImageFly worry about it. Let ImageFly worry about optimizing your images, backing things up, etc.
Lower your costs. Images are a bandwidth hog; especially with the consistent increase of online image quality. Your costs are lowered when ImageFly serves your images. ImageFly further helps lower your costs by automatically backing up your images and serving your images over a content-delivery network.
Examples?
Say, you have an image you want to create a thumbnail out of. It's as easy as this:
Or if you prefer POSTing it instead:
And what you get is:
[TABLE="width: 600, align: left"]
[TR]
[TD]Originally 250x183
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]
-going to -[/TD]
[TD]Now 100x73 (maintaining
aspect ratio)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Side Notes
As I mentioned, this idea initially came out of scratching my own itch. To test the waters, I built a proof of concept over a long weekend, showed it a few people, with a warm reception and excitement. This leads me on to the next section...
Important Questions
Thanks for reading this guys. I look forward to hearing what you all have to say in my never-ending quest to reach the fastlane.
ImageFly - Ridiculously Easy Image Editing API
What? ImageFly is a an API that you, as a developer, can leverage while building out your applications to handle the monotonous tasks of manipulating images. For example, normally, you need to do stuff when a user uploads a photo, such as create a thumbnail, resize it to a common width, change the quality (to ensure a sane filesize), and perhaps strip all the photo metadata information.
Why? As of now, the only ways to handle this is language dependent, and normally overcomplicated (e.g., GD in PHP, RMagick in Ruby, etc.). An additional way is to install something like ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick and make system calls (or use complicated wrappers) to these applications. While powerful, the downside of this approach is that these applications are insanely complex, and it's not necessarily as straight forward how to do something simple.
The fact of the matter is, you should be focused on building out YOUR application, and not spending hours trying to get your photo infrastructure perfect.
How does it benefit you?
Three simple benefits for you:
- You don't have to learn complex image libraries, and can focus on building out your application
- Cut down on development time
- Lower your costs
You don't have to learn complex image libraries. More often than not, all you need to do is resize an image or create thumbnails. Why bother learning complex image libraries when you don't have to? ImageFly abstracts all the goo away and allows you to handle all the basic functionality in a simple and concise API call.
Cut down on your development time. Less code equals less maintenance. Cut complex image manipulation out of your development cycle and let ImageFly worry about it. Let ImageFly worry about optimizing your images, backing things up, etc.
Lower your costs. Images are a bandwidth hog; especially with the consistent increase of online image quality. Your costs are lowered when ImageFly serves your images. ImageFly further helps lower your costs by automatically backing up your images and serving your images over a content-delivery network.
Examples?
Say, you have an image you want to create a thumbnail out of. It's as easy as this:
Code:
http://api.imageflyapp.com/thumbnail/100/100?image=http://yoursite.com/kitten.jpgOr if you prefer POSTing it instead:
Code:
curl http://api.imageflyapp.com/ \
-X POST \
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-d '{ "image" : "http://yoursite.com/kitten.jpg",
"operations" : [{
"operation" : "thumbnail",
"args" : { "width" : 100, "height": 100 }
}]
}'And what you get is:
[TABLE="width: 600, align: left"]
[TR]
[TD]Originally 250x183
[/TD][TD="align: center"]
-going to -[/TD]
[TD]Now 100x73 (maintaining
aspect ratio)
[/TD][/TR]
[/TABLE]
Side Notes
As I mentioned, this idea initially came out of scratching my own itch. To test the waters, I built a proof of concept over a long weekend, showed it a few people, with a warm reception and excitement. This leads me on to the next section...
Important Questions
- As a developer, would you use something like this? Why or why not?
- Do these API services (think Postmark/SendGrid, Twilio, etc.) worry you as a developer (relinquishing control to a third party)?
- Most importantly, would you pay for a service like this?
Thanks for reading this guys. I look forward to hearing what you all have to say in my never-ending quest to reach the fastlane.
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