Interview with Beau Hartshorne of Snipshot
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“Snipshot”:http://www.snipshot.com is a web-based image editor. You don’t need to download anything to make it work. Beau is a twenty-something Canadian web programmer. He’s pictured here in blue next to Snipshot’s co-founder, Greg Dingle. |
It has been said that online photo editing was impossible. What was the biggest challenge you faced in making it happen?
Browsers. It’s almost as if they’ve conspired to make it difficult to
build something this powerful. That said, I remind myself that a web browser is a much better environment to work with than what was available to my peers 20 years ago. Programmers have always pushed the limits of their platforms. I’m sure the folks who built VisiCalc and the original Mac OS fought many problems with their platforms to bring their software to market.
How do you differentiate from your competitors?
We take extra care to make editing pictures easy. The user is our
number one priority. Every feature is carefully reviewed. Do we need this? Is the extra complexity – the extra click – worth it?
What has been the most fun about developing the site? What
inspires you?
The challenges and constant learning. I love that. Our goal is to
have every image posted to the web go through Snipshot first. It’s
impossibly ambitious, but that’s what keeps us going.
Bonus: What’s your favorite photo that you edited with Snipshot? How does it look now compared to the original?
I took a photo of the Vancouver skyline on a gloomy day after a
snowstorm. It’s one of our sample pictures. One click with “Enhance” turns the snow white, and when you max out the saturation the colors jump out.
Copyright © 2007 by Sonia Aggarwal