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Gifpop.io – Print gifs with the magic of lenticular printing

235 points| tpsc | 12 years ago |gifpop.io | reply

111 comments

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[+] doctorwho|12 years ago|reply
Very cool! I wrote code to do this back in 1995 for a company called 3DCOM. We supported full color, full page prints from a sequence of 24 images, each from a slightly different angle to produce a 3D "holographic" printout. the effect was so good you could stick your finger into the image.

At the time (the dark ages of commodity printer technology) it required an EPSON inkjet that could do at least 1200dpi. After printing you just slapped a sticky-backed lenticular lens (lined up with registration marks) on the printout and voila!

I kept one 8"x10" 3D printout of a buckyball that's still pretty impressive looking, even after nearly 20 years!

[+] shashashasha|12 years ago|reply
That's amazing! That's why we're honestly so excited about using lenticular type technologies with gifs — they both feel like dumb, old technologies that are actually kind of wonderfully straightforward, and have a lot of creative potential! If you have any photos of that buckyball print we'd love to see it!
[+] vanderZwan|12 years ago|reply
Twenty years from that to this? That's a pretty long time without anyone doing anything with this technology then (this doesn't sound much more advanced than what you did back then, except for the addition of internet and gifs).

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I think it's neat this service finally exists!

[+] sarah2079|12 years ago|reply
This is an awesome idea. I would love the option to upload a short video clip instead of a gif though, and have it take 10 evenly spaced frames from the video. My nieces (ages 8 & 10) would love to use this to make prints of themselves in action, but it would be easier for them to be able go straight from a video taken with a phone to a printed product.
[+] shashashasha|12 years ago|reply
Thanks! We currently do support Vine and Instagram video, and you can pick a short clip from there. Processing all videos in all formats is a little tricky right now and it's helpful to have the pre-constraint of those social networks. Taking video from a phone is a great idea though!
[+] aleyan|12 years ago|reply
Looks fantastic.

I noticed that all the lenticulars demonstrated have horizontally aligned lenses for a final image that you rock head to heel. Why not offer a vertically aligned lenses for a final image to that you rock side to side? If I understand correctly, a user should be able to do this themselves if they flip the source image 90 degrees, but an option would be nice. There are some issues with your eyes seeing different frames with vertical lenses, but that could be used for cool stereo effects too.

[+] shashashasha|12 years ago|reply
Hi Aleyan! Yes, side to side works but it works much better when you're further away (unless you've calculated the eye spacing and distance in your imagery). We're planning on offering the option for artist prints to be printed horizontally or vertically, because some of them will be hung on walls.
[+] thedufer|12 years ago|reply
Vertically-aligned is a good way to get 3D out of lenticular prints because each eye sees different images. Unfortunately, this means that things that are supposed to be 2D/animated instead of 3D/still would not look as nice as horizontally-aligned ones.
[+] devindotcom|12 years ago|reply
10 frames is a little scanty, but I think the idea is great. I'm afraid most of my favorite gifs won't fit, but using this type of display is forehead-slappingly obvious - now that they've done it, of course.
[+] shashashasha|12 years ago|reply
Hi, thanks! 10 frames is a little short right now we agree, and we're working with our manufacturer to get even more. The main constraint is the registration accuracy between the lens and the print, which gets super hard when printing more than a few frames.
[+] kadjar|12 years ago|reply
Is there really no way to see the pricing structure before I upload things? That's frustrating.
[+] shashashasha|12 years ago|reply
That's great feedback! We've been so rushed to get it out the door for the holidays that we're lacking some basic information up front. We'll get that up shortly!

For now, some price/sizing deets:

$12 each — 2.125" x 3.375" — Business Card

$12 each — 2.75" x 2.75" — Small Square

$15 each — 3.5" x 5.0" — Postcard

$15 each — 5.0" x 5.0" — Large Square

[+] geekfactor|12 years ago|reply
Just placed an order. Looking forward to receiving the card.

You guys should consider doing affiliate deals with places like http://makeagif.com. (That's where I made my animated GIF in the first place.)

[+] biot|12 years ago|reply
I know this ship has sailed, but the G in GIF is pronounced like in "gin", not like in "gig".
[+] scoofy|12 years ago|reply
As a student of philosophy of language I love/hate this debate. I'll say this, I feel badly for people who think the creator gets to control the pronunciation. Hopefully the prescriptivists will learn language evolves irregardless of whether we want it to. Whenever you think you have firm rules, you will find they will change momentarily. Let me know if you spot what I snuck in there.
[+] Pxtl|12 years ago|reply
Then they should've called it Jif. Tasty, tasty Jif.

Also, my handle is pronounced "James Luxury Yacht". Which is in turn pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove".

[+] dublinben|12 years ago|reply
As the initialization for Graphics Interchange Format, a hard g is just as appropriate as a soft g.
[+] skyebook|12 years ago|reply
We were lucky enough to have Sha and Rachel come to ultravisual for lunch yesterday, first time I got to see some of the lenticulars in person and they look awesome. I think they're taking this in a really fun direction, can't wait to see what people make with the service :)
[+] ljf|12 years ago|reply
I want to see more shots of the actual prints though, I only saw one in the video, be good to get a better idea of the quality of the print and the motion.
[+] jasonkostempski|12 years ago|reply
Genius! Just one request. Crop a little off the left of the animation. I can't stop staring at the hair on that thumb. It's like watching tall grass sway in the wind.
[+] csmuk|12 years ago|reply
OMG.

I was just looking at one of my children's books earlier and came up with exactly this idea. Two hours later, sit down on HN and someone has already done it.

Awesome work whoever did this!

[+] Timothee|12 years ago|reply
I had this idea too a few months ago. I had looked at lenticular sheets and other things but stopped thinking about it eventually, not sure why. (except for the fact that is what I usually do: I have an idea, think about it for a little bit, look at how it could be done and stop there :))

I think it was a combination of the price of the individual sheets (on Amazon at least) and the need for a high quality printer and assembly (the print and the lenticular sheet need to be perfectly aligned). I was imagining a cheap service to get memes into magnets for your fridge but the prices seemed not to match this vision. Working with artists like this site is doing is definitely a great idea. I had started trying to find a local printer but I don't think I found anybody fast enough for me not to move on to a different idea.

Great work!

[+] highphive|12 years ago|reply
Awesome idea at a pretty reasonable price. Regarding the video... they might want to invest in some acting lessons haha.
[+] jimzvz|12 years ago|reply
I liked the video. I hate it when people take themselves too seriously.

Good luck to the team.

[+] nthitz|12 years ago|reply
It would be cool if the user could pick the 10 frames out of the gif rather than requiring 10 sequential frames!
[+] PavlovsCat|12 years ago|reply
With CSS transforms and javascript, it might be possible to make some kind of in-browser preview of the final result even!
[+] kkshin|12 years ago|reply
How far is the technology from being able to do this on textiles? That would be sick.
[+] recycleme|12 years ago|reply
Ok, now just combine that with t-shirts (g-shirts).

edit: awesome idea btw!

[+] roywiggins|12 years ago|reply
This looks fantastic. I make gifs out of pictures I take on burst mode and these would be beyond perfect for presenting them. (try it at a party, it's much more fun than static pictures, also for posed group shots)

I'm waiting for flexible color solar-powered wireless e-ink displays to give the full "Harry Potter" moving-picture effect, but they're a few years out!

[+] BSeward|12 years ago|reply
This is super cool. I've looked a little at lenticular printing for 3D prints but sourcing the lenses was a little more effort than I needed. I'd pay well over material cost to have someone else handle assembling. If you add an option meant for that I'd be all over it.
[+] shashashasha|12 years ago|reply
Thanks! What do you mean about adding an option for 3D prints? Do you mean doing the layering on our end? We could get you viewing angles and such so that you could upload prelayered imagery through the website normally, would that work?
[+] judk|12 years ago|reply
Explain what lenticular is on the home page, and maybe show a photo of an actual example?
[+] shashashasha|12 years ago|reply
That's great feedback. The first image is an actual example of a gif card at work (hovering plays the animation), and the third link is an explanation of lenticular printing. We should make it more clear though!
[+] jypepin|12 years ago|reply
Omg this is an amazing idea! I love gifs so much, I will definitely try this out!
[+] HyprMusic|12 years ago|reply
This is very cool. Is there any particular reason why non-GIF version is limited to just 2 pictures? It would be awesome to be able to manually upload a number of images, especially with phones supporting burst mode.
[+] shashashasha|12 years ago|reply
We'd love to offer manual upload of a sequence of images, we just don't want people to get the idea that they can upload 10 unique images. With lenticular sheets at this high framecount there's always some ghosting, so it's really for motion (gifs+video) or flipping between a couple distinct images (flip)