I would appreciate your feedback on Photawe Pre-launch

Discussions
#1

Hi guys,

After 1y+ work on this, we want to finally launch Phot-awe on Product Hunt.

What Phot-awe is: a Photo Viewer, that wants to empower users to spend time enjoying their Best Photos, while minimizing the time spent looking for them.

Our planned date to do the launch is next Tue.

Our pitch would be more or less:
We’ve made Phot-Awe to help you make sense of those 25K+ Photos you have on your PC and on your Devices (Phones/Tablets, Cameras, Sticks).

We want to empower you to spend time enjoying your Best Photos, while minimizing the time spent looking for them.

See the Current Photo, while not having to lose sight of surrounding Photos. You choose how many Photos you want to see.
Blazingly Fast. Easy. No Wasted Space.
Apply Effects while still seeing a full page of Photos.
View all your Photos on the World Map. Expand to any World Location for more Accuracy
View all your Photos on the Timeline. Find Your Favorite Moments in no-time!

Could you let us know if:

  • the text is appealing enough
  • the text is too big
  • the text is too vague
  • any suggestions you may have

Thanks in advance!

#2

Not just that, we want you to really enjoy viewing your Photos with our Photo Viewer Application.

I think that phrase is a bit redundant. I’d kill it.

Also, white text on busy photographic bg is a bit hard to read.

#3

Thanks!
Will kill that text - will have my web programmer remove it. About the busy photographic bg - I will have my web programmer make the whole text a bit more opaque. All this on Monday. Thanks again!

Also - before the launch, the main page will be moved, and there will be a video on the main page (the video is not ready yet).

About the text for Product Hunt - do you think it looks ok?

#4

I’d like to see more mention of what exactly your software does differently/better than Apples native Photo app, Aperture, and the other big boys.

What problem do you solve better than everyone else and why should anyone care?

Mull it over, the text needs some refining in my opinion to really extract a bonafide value proposition that can stand firmly on its two legs.

#5

First of all, for now we’re Windows-only (we do plan for other OSs, once we know there’s interest in that).
So, we don’t plan to compete with Apple Photos for now :wink:

From the get-go, we wanted to provide you with an awesome experience while browsing/filtering your Photos, be it 1K, 50K or more. We’ve made lots of small tweaks that will help you in your day-to-day viewing. For example, you can use the 7-0 hotkeys to assign 7-10 rating to a Photo.

We optimized this for fast Viewing and blazingly fast Filtering, even for 50K+ Photos. You see the Current Photo crisp clear, and also see surrounding photos (you decide how many surrounding Photos you want to see). You’ll notice that there’s no wasted space.

Zoom Without overlapping the Photo itself. Compare Photos while Zooming - just move to a different Photo - Zooming continues.

Synchronize with your Phones/Tables/Cameras/USB Sticks with a single click - say ‘Yes’, and Phot-Awe will import all the New Photos from that device. You can then easily see just the Photos you imported by going to “My Devices” in Folders View and expand to your device. Further expand, and you will see the dates of each sync you made - click it, and you’ll see just the Photos imported that day.

You can apply Effects to the Current Photo, and preview the effects on all the visible Photos. Switch the Photo and/or Current Page while being in “Effects View”, and effects will automatically apply to the new Photo/Page.

View your Photos across Time - the Timeline : easily see when you took most Photos, expand down to the day, and find Moments, and/or your Highlights from that time.

View all your Photos on the World Map. Expand to any World Location for more Accuracy. Expand down to street level, if you wish.

The problem that I have is I’m not sure how to compress all the above in one or two sentences :slight_smile: (for Product Hunt).

#6

The app looks great and it’s evident that you put a lot of effort into it.

I assume you are targeting consumers, which IMO, is a mistake. Consumers will keep using Google Photos, Dropbox, iOS Photos because they are great and free. On Google Photos, I can type “[Daughter name] at the beach” and it will (creepily) show me all photos of my daughter at the beach. I don’t think finding photos is a problem consumers have and it will be hard for a bootstrapped app to compete with the big guys in this space.

I don’t think you are solving a significant pain point, given all the free alternatives that are available. In your position, I would try to niche it down, perhaps to professional photographers, and focus on what problems they have that you can solve with your app. It’s a lot easier to charge for a product that helps people make money.

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#7

@intelligentcoder Thanks for the kind words and the reply!

You’re right about me targetting consumers, and you may be right. I need to think about this. My idea from the get-go was to make browsing photos a very enjoyable experience (which existing apps did not provide - at least for me).

Having said that, I will analyze the initial feedback very thoroughly , and if this is the case, will indeed focus on photographers. In fact, I have quite a few ideas lined up for targetting photographers - like, my number one would be to integrate posting hi-quality photos to Facebook (namely, since FB trims the photos, automatically have a link to the original photo) - our app would streamline all that.

Another idea will be several layers of backup + cloud (which mainly will target photographers).

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#8

@intelligentcoder @foti-panagio
So, I’ve pondered quite a bit on what I had, and my former tagline (Find the Photos You Love - FAST) was indeed boring.

Here’s what I’ve come up with.
Possible Taglines:
Phot-Awe - Your Photos Are Awesome. Browse Them Like A Boss.
Phot-Awe - The Home of Awesome Photos.
Phot-Awe - Your Photos Are Awesome. Let Us Help You Enjoy Them.
Phot-Awe - Your Photos Deserve a Viewer That Makes Them Shine
Phot-Awe - Your Photos Are Awesome. They Deserve An Awesome Viewer.
(I love the first two the most)

Text for ProductHunt:
You Love taking Photos. We’re right there beside you, accompanying you in your Experience. Shoot Photos >> Plug Your Camera/Card/Phone >> Sync >> View >> Enjoy >> Rate, Favorite, #Tags, Notes >> Effects >> Zoom, Compare >> Share >> Enjoy >> Repeat.

What do you guys think?

#9

Among the listed, I’d take the one above. Not perfect, but better than “Like a Boss” which has a polluting reference to a workplace.

None of the taglines made me think “yeah, it solves my problem”. The meta-problem is that I cannot really put a finger on my problem. I know I have one - I have thousands of photos of my kids over some 20 years in one huge pile (currently uploaded to Dropbox). Occasionally I’m trying to create some order by adding a folder or two by event or date, and fail - new photos get added faster than I sort the old ones.

So I guess a tagline that would trigger me would have something about me taking the control back over my collection.

Except “The Home” suggest you also provide a storage service, which AFAIU, you don’t? Then, instead, it should be some word that conveys a control, power over - in the boring business world this is usually “Manager” - “Managing All Your Assets”. Being B2C, you’ll have to find a more interesting word, methinks.

#10

Got it, thanks. You’re right about the “Like a boss” unfortunately :slight_smile:
We will probably go with “Phot-Awe - Your Photos Are Awesome. They Deserve An Awesome Viewer.” accompanied by a rather cool presentation video (which I’m still waiting on :))

#11

I thought that a map search for pics (at least for a windows app) would sell like hotcakes a few years ago, but as it turns out it doesn’t sell itself as I wished :slight_smile:
https://www.zabkat.com/deskrule/gps-photo-search.htm

but with a more energetic guy who is prepared to put in the marketing effort, it might work!

#12

Consumers are fickle.

However, I remember I liked very much that Picasa was organized the albums by dates automatically. If you add location to that and provide default names to it like “At Tim Hortons Feb 22, 2018”, it takes 99% of the work of organizing the albums.

#13

He he :slight_smile: Initially, I thought I was the only one doing this for Windows. Then, while I did not find out about the zabkat app, I did find out about another app that was created 2 years ago I think, with pretty much 1500+ votes on MS Store. Having said that, my app offers it all - besides just finding Photos on the map, you can further filter stuff out, and see only those on the map. Also, you can combine that with favorites and rating. Long story short, lets see what people say :slight_smile:

PS. Are you the maker of xplorer (zabkat)? If so, I’ve been using your product for years :stuck_out_tongue: And yes, it’s awesome!

#14

That is something I plan to add in the near future, to my timeline - basically, find out where a specific set of Photos was taken.

#15

Thanks a lot for the feedback guys, product is live here

1 Like
#16

yes, my main business is xplorer2. Glad you like it!

#17

I don’t like that one. My photos are my personal work, and the thought of someone else “looking” at them with me… you know. Even if you’re not, it comes across that way.

#18

Interesting :slight_smile: I will need to ponder more on this one, and see what others think. This one came from the guy that made the video. I’ve asked about 25 people (before using it), and they all love/like it.

LATER EDIT:
My bad. We ended up using “You Love taking Photos. We’re giving your Passion an Awesome Experience.”
Does that sound a bit better? :slight_smile:

#19

All the right words, but bug me if I know what they mean.

#20

In a nutshell: We give your Passion (= taking Photos), an Awesome Experience (=Awesome Photo Viewer) :slight_smile: