This is a more of a rant on an overall trend than criticism of this site completely, but I honestly do not understand the "drag to upload a file" interaction at all.
I'm in all likelihood going to need to navigate through a bunch of folders to locate what I want to upload anyway - why force me to open up Finder, reposition it so that my browser and finder are both visible, with the "drop area" visible as well, find my file and drag it over? With the default file upload that HTML provides, it's going to open a conveniently sized open window from the start, with a clear call to action on how to select the file in question, and no requirement for an awkward drag into some box on a webpage.
It really feels like prioritizing "cool" interactions over usability.
1. The default file chooser on windows is horrible.
2. With multiple monitors, multiple desktops, etc, quite often people will have their working files open anyway.
3. You can drag a picture straight from another open browser tab so it never needs to touch your browser.
4. Most sites give a choice of either method.
5. It's a fairly intuitive action. I know that I caught older family members struggling when they used to drag images and then the image would display in their browser. At this point they thought the photo was online and would be confused when they couldn't then find it on the site when they came back to it later.
I've always thought it was better than Finder, and is still one of the few things I miss from Windows. I could go into why I feel this way but I don't want to go off on yet a other tangent away from the main topic.
On ubuntu, I'm currently using xmonad without gnome, and thus no nautilus (or whatever other thing it is that opens Finder-like windows and generally tries to behave like the Finder) by default.
Whenever I need to drop something into a web page, I find myself starting up a one-off nautilus and dragging from that.
I seem to recall there is a tiiiiny utility you run like "drag_target <filename>", and it pops up a window that is a drag target that plumbs <filename> through when you drop it somewhere. Does anybody recall the name of that utility ?
"reposition it so that my browser and finder are both visible, with the "drop area" visible as well"
You can grab a file then Cmd(or Alt probly)+tab back to your browser window and drop the file.
Don't get me wrong I don't like drag and drop interfaces for the most part. If you do have the folder open you are working on in the background, drag and dropping different files can be quicker than using a choose file dialog.
My modus operandi is setting up bottom right corner of the screen as a hot corner for Show Desktop. Just bump your mouse down the bottom right, open up a finder window to find your file, start by dragging the file down to the right corner, which resets all windows – and the just drop! This is obviously even smoother for files that are already on the desktop.
I just opened a tab and searched for some iPhone app screenshots in Google Images and dragged it back into Breezi, all without touching my filesystem[1].
[1] I should say _technically_ it did touch my filesystem as that image was probably yanked from a local cache of some sort, but to the user this feels intuitive and not invasive.
You can easily drop many files and even folders in Chrome.
With a file selector this is not as easy to do
And it feels more natural to pick something and drop it somewhere rather and go digging into a file picker which never open in the right hierarchy.
It's kind of annoying on a tiling window manager (i3) as well since I otherwise don't often open a GUI file explorer. On the plus side though I guess when I do open it, they're always both visible.
You’re completely ok to use PlaceIt-generated-images for commercial use. You just need to attribute PlaceIt if the work is publicly displayed. We’re ok with any attribution so long as you’re clearly not trying to be an asshole and just burying it. Doesn’t have to be large or very prominent either. Anything along the lines of mentioning PlaceIt is fine. We’d obviously really appreciate a link back.
This is fantastic. I'm surprised I haven't seen something like this before. I think you've got a great potential market here for monetizing. It's like stock photography meets product upsell.
My first suggestion would be to get similar shots to those you've already done with a female replacing the male. It's an easy way to add more shots quickly.
I also like the idea of more scenes including people. Make it look like they're having fun and also using the phone/tablet at the same time. Smiling faces sell products!
"Hands holding photoshop-able screens in environments" is rich photographic territory. I would also love to see fat hairy hands, dark-skinned hands, waxy old hands, prosthetic hands, etc.
Thanks for sharing, I'll be using it on my revamped marketing site.
I think in terms of conversion, potential users emphatically see themselves using the product with their device with this type of frame (opposed just a screenshot with no device frame).
However, I would suggest several PC shots. Like Lenovo laptop, Dell monitor, etc instead of being so Apple-centric.
The iPhone 5 screenshot area is off. Top left corner too high, top right corner too close to the right, two bottom corners too close to the right so perspective looks incongruent.
Actually content areas in almost all templates are slightly off. All these screens have gaps around them, it’s chrome - bezel - screen gap - pixels. Consider shooting template images with the device showing a solid color so you have the actual image area baked into the original, not with the screen turned off because you’re more likely to get the placement wrong that way.
Only Apple products there - why tailor to the minority? Globally Apple has around twenty-something percent of smartphones, thirty-something percent of tablets and ten-something percent of 'PC's'. You wouldn't suspect if you looked at the media though where it often is Apple or bust. I never understood this herd mentality and I still don't. People will start dropping Android screenshots in your iProducts, Xmonad runninng on Macs (OK, that is plausible but still...), Windows will suddenly magically run on more iProducts, etc.
Diversity is good. Apple is not very diverse. Why not add something else?
- Apple hardware looks better (regardless of what you think of the rest of it)
- Apple hardware is less distracting (more minimalist than most non-Apple stuff) so the focus is on the product itself
- Apple has the single most common hardware models (Android may be more common overall, but the iPhone is more popular than any single Android device).
I mean really, who wants to have their app surrounded by some clunky boxy Dell laptop? You're basically sending the message of "look at how out-of-date we are". It's not about market share of devices, it's about perception of your product.
Surely it would make more sense to group them? If I'm going to be creating a universal application for iOS, it would be much easier to see all the available options.
That said, I do think the other platforms should be given some sort of visibility to show that they're actually present.
Isn't working for me right now...possibly server load? But great idea. I too would pay. And I second the suggestion for more diversity in the shots. E.g., I could use one right now in the hands of a Hispanic teen girl. In general, I would need more women.
I used this for a mock that I posted on Dribbble[1]. I remember when it was first released and there were only a few templates so it's great to see that it's still growing. If the OP is here, how hard would it be to have a scene with multiple images?
I love breezi. Unfortunately, it is against Apple's marketing guidelines to use their product in unauthorized ways to promote your app. It is loosely enforced, but they have pointed it out to us and asked for a takedown (politely). They can also hold it against you if they're considering you for a feature.
Are you saying you've used the "iPhone being held"/"Photographed in context" style before and Apple told you to take it down? I would be interested in this because I've been considering this style for my landing page update.
We have. But that's because we're a big publisher and Apple manages our account with humans. They expect us to follow their rules (in return for heightened visibility with the iTunes store curation/editorial/marketing folks).
Looks great, but it's taking forever to process the image. And I'm sure that because the app provides no feedback or indication that your image is queued, people are probably stopping the process and re-trying their upload which probably only slows things down tremendously!
I really want to share this with people, but it's horrendously slow. I uploaded a 2048 x 1536 image generated from my iPad, and it has been processing it for the past 10+ minutes.
Amazing. Thanks for sharing this. I'd been searching for stock images like the ones offered here in which to superimpose screenshots but always came short so just didn't bother. Now I'll bother.
nice idea. i can see people paying for this to use some premium background images. 3-4 generic ones are free, you could offer up a lot more custom ones for a small fee.
Can I have one context photo with a laptop on the top of a roller coster ? This could be a good introduction for a VC or startup conference presentation.
I would suggest to provide HP or Dell computers too because Apple computer everywhere is getting boring. Ask them to giveaway the laptop as marketing campaing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you are sending a Safari user-agent string for all of the devices.
It might be worthwhile to send the proper user-agent strings for each device, so that you'll get a custom response from servers which dynamically generate content based on that header.
any chance of getting a good ol' boring office version maybe with a real monitor or just a laptop on a desk? the kind of people i would use this for really dont go for "macbook air with a notepad in the garden"
Awesome. I was just the other day thinking that there should be this exact service when considering doing one of these shots. This is going to save me a lot of time, thank you. Will be much easier to create marketing assets.
I'd love this as a webservice (I'd pay). I need to create product shots for every customer I have (white labelling) and it would be awesome to be able to generate them on the fly.
I'm guessing it takes a higher resolution image than what the device would use? The sites I tried ended up rendering wrong in terms of what media queries were used...
what are the terms of use? what is breezi doing with my uploaded screenshot? can I find that out somewhere?
are the screenshots stored on their servers?
I'm in all likelihood going to need to navigate through a bunch of folders to locate what I want to upload anyway - why force me to open up Finder, reposition it so that my browser and finder are both visible, with the "drop area" visible as well, find my file and drag it over? With the default file upload that HTML provides, it's going to open a conveniently sized open window from the start, with a clear call to action on how to select the file in question, and no requirement for an awkward drag into some box on a webpage.
It really feels like prioritizing "cool" interactions over usability.