Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator

224 points

4 years ago

Hi HN - this is a little side project I threw together. Some implementation details: image processing is all done with headless GIMP (running inside a Docker container) through its built-in Python API. It's _very_ slow (about 50 seconds/image), and currently it processes exactly one image at a time. The website is built with NextJS; payments are processed by Stripe.

I've had the best results with pictures of houses, although certain photos of people or nature can look neat, too. (For example: https://brushify.art/s/ruYmQWk, original photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation.) The effect obscures the edges of the photo, so images with plenty of margin around the subject work best.

Something I'd like to play around with is swapping the GIMP script for an AI-based process (maybe using something like Stable Diffusion?), with the goal of generating images that look more handmade (something like these: https://www.etsy.com/ca/search?q=watercolor+house). I have exactly zero AI experience though, so there would be a bit of a learning curve.

Would love any thoughts or critiques!

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edit: remove unrelated details

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