Reference Image Player
Wow, I'm pretty excited! I've finally made an application for my own use after trying out a couple others — with which I was ultimately unhappy. I've started studying drawing recently and as part of my practice I've been doing quick figure drawings for 30 minutes every morning. Previously — before making my awesome app — I was using a combination of web apps to source enough variety in reference images. I really liked the experience provided by Line of Action and would be disappointed in the lost QoL whenever switching to another app to get access to more images. In addition to Line of Action, the other reference image playerI really don't know what to call this category of application, so I've settled on "reference image players". Though, I suppose those smart frames that cycle images kind of fit the bill as well... I enjoyed enough to keep using was Quickposes, though it lacked some nice features LoA had e.g. sounds at specific intervals or specifying how many images you wanted in a session.
The Killer Features
To be honest, I feel a bit silly. It's not a groundbreaking application and mine isn't even especially feature rich, but it just works exactly how I want it to. I have a couple other utilities and web apps that I've made and still use regularly, but never something I felt would be actually valuableOr frankly even applicable, as most things I've made recently aren't generalizable to an audience and pretty specific to my workflows and setup. I'm not gonna have someone self-host my all-in-one media/exercise/family messaging/shopping/etc. app. to others — and I can definitely see another aspiring artist using this app.
The first feature I wanted most was the ability to review! My god, you'd think that'd be table stakes, but with all the licensing and cloud hosting of the images, you either:
- CAN'T REVIEW THE IMAGE BECAUSE IT'S NOT LICENSED FOR VIEWING (unless you random upon it through the image roulette)
- Or can't review the image because you closed the page and it would be prohibitive for the website to keep history for all their users, for all their images, not to mention they might shed images and wouldn't be able to show them to you anymore.
This was especially frustrating because I like to review my practice with my wife, so to ensure I'd always be able to show her the references I just ended up recording my screen each time with OBS. Not the worst thing, but certainly silly. Now I have a button that, no matter how many or how varied my sessions areLet's be honest, I could actually hardcode my standard session, I have yet to deviate lol. 5 1-minutes, 3 3-minutes, 2 5-minutes., I can just hit "Review Day" and walk through each reference image for the day with my wife!
To make the history and licensing stuff easier, the application is completely local and uses local images, so it's BYOIAlso as part of this I did end up making a bit of an image web scraper and now have around 40k reference images locally. All were technically paid for, they just had really inconvenient or sometimes impossible download processes even when explicitly offering downloads.. You could see that as a feature, but really just feels like a different path. I can certainly compare the features of my reference image player to others, but I'm not offering anywhere near the service they doMaybe they'd let me make players for them?. But along those same lines, some features just aren't possible for them to implement BECAUSE of the service they provide.
Of course the best feature is that I can add any feature that I want. It is nice to be in control of your software.
The End
That's really all I got. Tauri stack, React as usual (can't help myself). You can see the demo on Github if you're interested. Oh, also as part of this I joined the Apple Developer Program so I could sign my Mac version. So maybe some mobile apps in my future?
I'm just very grateful that I've had this experience. I feel like it's a bit of a plateau I've overcome in terms of software development. I've always wanted to make something someone else could useMind you, there are no other users of my app afaik. I did share it on Reddit and it got some upvotes, but I know someone <i>could</i> install it and use it with little resistance.. I've also tried repeatedly to follow the advice that I should make things I want to use, but I feel like in the past I've been so set on making something, that I never took time to actually cultivate hobbies or interests that could benefit from being able to make software. Then I stopped looking and the opportunity and desire just landed in my lap! I imagine now that I've tread the path it'll be easier to walk down in the future, though I'll continue to avoid searching.