Primps Video Demo!

So in only 10 takes, I made quick video demo of some of the main features on the site. I'm still trying to find the perfect little icon to link this up with on the main page, but until then here's an old school link...

http://www.primps.com/primps_demo.html

...see, I got the "http://" in there and everything.

How to autoload an image from your site into Primps...

Okay so here's a cool "hidden" feature on the site. You can autoload any image online and have it bypass the initial start screen on Primps (the screen that says "Upload or Choose Photo" , and the autoloaded image will go straight to the editing mode. This is a handy feature if you already have an image on your site and you want your visitors to be able to caption it. I think its a cool idea for web comic authors if they removed their own captions from their comics and gave readers the occasional chance to pen a comic.

Anyway, this is very simple.  The image link on your site just needs to include this in front of it...

http://www.primps.com/index.php?autoload=

So to autoload this image... 

 http://www.yoursite.com/image.jpg

...The full link would just combine the two like...

  http://www.primps.com/index.php?autoload=http://www.yoursite.com/image.jpg

Make sense? Here's some working examples...

http://www.primps.com/index.php?autoload=http://www.mows.com/wordless_comics/mows1.jpg

http://www.primps.com/index.php?autoload=http://www.comingsoon.net/gallery/15533/The_Incredible_Hulk_4.jpg

Cool right.

Primpz is now Primps!

Okay this is somewhat old news. A couple months ago I bought the domain Primps from someone (Sedo.com did a good job handling the transaction). So I switched up the site. Primpz.com will still work of course, but Primps is now the official site name.

Elections Buttons for YOUR Cam-pagan

Hey, long time no blog! Why is that??... well develop-minting on Primpz has continued, but I didn't add much to the objects library so I didn't feel much was blog worthy. Although I did fix one major thing that bothered me from Day 1. When the images were scaled down in Flash they would become pixellated around on the edges. But I had an "oh wait, I know how to fix that" moment, and did something I should have done from Day 1, and boom, we're looking good again. (Flash developers, here's a hint... Library, Click your Image, Check off "Smoothing")

Anyway, enough chit-chat. I have a slew of election / political buttons you can now drop on your own images. Many of the buttons have see-thru middles, so you can surround someone's face with an election button (reminds me of "Pick Flick" if you remember the movie Election) . And the rest of the buttons have blank middles so you can enter in text there.

Also if you haven't already noticed, if you create a caption bubble, but don't want the bubble and just want the text, you can right click and select "Toggle Bubble Visibility", or you can take the Transparency down incrementally using the "Adjust Transparency" button on the main toolbar.

Oh and speaking of the visuals options in the toolbar, I did add a Bevel feature, and the RGB sliders are now tucked in there instead of floating on bottom. Much cleaner, methinks.

Alright, I'm outtie!

Ka-Pow!

Tonight I added to the FX category a whole slew of different explosions. So have fun dropping those bad-boys on top of your images.

Also under the FX section is what I'm calling "Color Plates". Basically these are squares of vector art that once piled on top of your image (or other objects) will change their color. For example, here's a kind of 2001 effect....



Get the idea yet? Here's an example of one of the color plates only taking up half the image....



That one's more of a photo-negative effect.

This used to be a man....

....and it still is. Just much less of a man. So if the image above and below aren't a major tip off, I've added eye makeup to the Primpz Object Library. So as usual, just upload or link up your image, and quickly drop in some of these funky eye templates to your file.




Also I meant to point this out before, but one of the great things about using .png files to add on top of your images, is the alpha channel not only gives you a cookie-cutter type outline of your object, but there's also some subtle (or not-so-subtle) transparency added within many of the png files. For example, if you add some of the sunglasses to your image, you'll notice many of the lenses allow you to see-through to the image below. Notice the collar through the lens...



(went a little crazy with the lens flares)

Side burns, soul patches, and more added to the library!

Alrighty, a whole shload of new stuff has been added to the library of .png's you can add onto your images. More Facial Hair, Sunglasses, more Hats, and a few more in the previous categories.

You won't remember my name, but you'll remember my red, blue, and green!

This isn't a major update, but its a major thing I should have done before. Now when you select an object, for example a speech bubble and its text, then tint it, when you re-select it again, the Tint handles will remember what values it was previously tinted at. Before, (shrug) they would just reset to being in the middle again. The object stayed the same color, but the handles reset. Like I said, not a biggie, but a needed update.

Add Planets to Your Images!

Just a quick update with some news on the latest category of drop down images. I threw in the Big 9, and also some of the more interesting moons. So for all you planet buffs, go crazy adding these to your pics!

More Nature Stuff Added!

Check out this starting image....



...and then with the latest Primpz additions....



Pretty disasterific, eh? To do something similar to your pictures, go to the Nature category (the icon with a tree) and Add Storms. The lens flares though are in the FX category, and then in the pulldown for Lights.

Enjoy! Primp well.

How many ghosts can you spot?

...Did you guess 5?? You're right. Visit Primpz to add some ghosts to your images.

Bigfoot, UFO's added to the Backgrounds Menu

Alrighty, just a quick update with some new features to the Primpz LOL builder / image editor / whatever the heck I'm calling this thing. You can now add some mystery and conspiracy to your pictures. Drop in a Bigfoot (or Bigfeet) in the background of your friends pictures, or go interstellar and pop in some UFO's. These are intentionally blurry, and somewhat small so you can sneak them into the backgrounds.

Enjoyz!

Advanced Tinting...

Well this was due sooner than later. You can now choose a Pre-set Color Scheme for your speech bubbles (which I also fancied up some) OR you can adjust the tinting manually on either the bubble or the text itself. So that opens up millions of possibilities for adding unique speech bubbles to your pictures. Plus if you add in either a drop shadow or blur, thats changes the look dramatically as well.

Alrighty, off to add s'more! Check out the latest version if its been a few days. I can't self proclaim this as the Ultimate LOL Builder without anyone seeing it =)

Ninja! Hair! Flowers!!

That title about sums up what I added to Primpz today. So when you want to some flowery, cute-haired ninjas to your images, boy you came to the right place.

Tiny little buttons! GRRR

Alright so I'm clearly not 100% gellin' with my GUI yet. Something's off. Maybe I'm too used to the toolbar buttons of my Adobe apps, so anything other than those beauties is going to look funky. But with that said, I'm not totally hating the changes I made to the toolbar buttons. I'll post a pic today, so in a week, when I've changed these 20 more times, I can look back and shudder...



..But aside from just monkeying around with the art inside those tiny buttons, I've also been plugging them up and adding a few more scale / sizing controls from the toolbar. Notably, a uniform scale up / scale down button and flip horizontally / flip vertically button. The flip buttons are key for being able to add wigs and glasses and not have to always be using images that are somewhat symmetrical.

And of course I've been making use of the Primpz app in the stupidest ways possible. Shining example, here's a pic I commented on my buddies Myspace page...



I guess I just have a "thing" for making cats look Mexican.

Happy Valentines Day!

Primpz usage #78, Add TONS of Flowers to any image. Just drag and drop from the object library. There's about 80 flowers to choose from!

The Softening Continues...

Oh hai. I'm back. So I've added a few new things. The obvious and most major thing being objects. Right now you can add hats, moustaches, some nerdy and blingy items to your photos. But obviously this opens up the site to a whole slew of other things. In the near future, expect to see things you'd dress people up with first. Outfits, wigs, etc. And then I'll add in some more abstract stuff. UFO's to add to backgrounds. Craziness like that.

Other than that, I've added a blur option. So if you want to blur out the background bubble of a text caption or any object thats do-able. I noticed once an object got shrunken to about 1/5 of its original size it would pixelate out slightly, so the blurring helps that. Also the blur looks cool on the text bubbles especially if you change the bubble's color scheme. It gives it a glow effect. In fact, why am I telling you when I can just show you. Here's an example....



Okay, more to come later.

Primpz! The soft, soft, very soft launch!

Okay, finally I've got things fun-ctioning nicely, so its time to put this site "out there". And if you happen to be reading this, please test caption some images at Primpz.com. Hopefully you'll get the gist of it right away. You can quickly (keyword, quickly) add a speech, thought, or other type bubble to any image. Either on your computer by uploading it to the server, or by just finding the image URL and loading it into the Flash movie. Once you do up something clever, just punch "I'm Finished", and wha-la! Your picture is ready to download or link to. You'll get some easy to cut-n-paste Myspace code as well.

On the horizon, I'll be adding more than just speech bubbles, funny hats, nerd glasses, but this is a good start. And it accomplishes my original goal which was to make a better LOL Builder than most. Although now that I've been playing with my own (but not-so-original) creation , I'm realizing this is simply a great way to add notes to images in general. Sometimes I'll take screengrabs of code to show people where they went astray, and I'll have to open Photoshop, grab the Text tool (which I hate in Photoshop), monkey around, etc. And then of course, save the file, then email. So instead of doing all that, I just screengrab a pic, upload, caption, and its already online. For example, this took all of about 25 seconds....



And of course, you do NOT have to sign up to use the site. I love the get-in-get-out nature of sites like TinyURL.com , they are just simple, good idea-driven sites and not a pain to use. Anyway, I'll use this blog to post up news about....er....site developments. Sheesh that sounds boring.

Later!