Editing interface
Before and after view

Darkroom - McHacks 13

Who Are We?

Hello everyone, we're Team Dart, and we're presenting our application Darkroom for McHacks 13.

Inspiration

Photo editing software is primarily closed-source and monopolized by big-tech companies like Adobe and Apple. We take issue with their business model—requiring users to pay monthly for packages of applications that might be unnecessary. Therefore, Team Dart built a stand-alone web application for photographers to combat these tech giants.

What It Does

Darkroom is a web-based photo editing application that contains essential components for professional photography, including:

Uploading images to the cloud for persistence
Basic editing parameters (Brightness, Contrast, Shadow, Highlight)
Color editing parameters (Temperature, Tint, Vibrance, Saturation)
HSL Color Mixer
Exporting multiple images

And more cool features incoming!

How We Built It

Tech Stack:

Frontend: SvelteKit, TypeScript, PixiJS, TailwindCSS
Backend: TypeScript, MongoDB
Database: MongoDB Atlas
Deployment: NGINX, Docker, DigitalOcean

Challenges We Ran Into

Researching system design to accomplish our goals, as there aren't many resources available
Time constraints—we had limited time to brainstorm and build
Working with hardware-level code to create custom shaders for each parameter
System integration
Deploying to a production server, as this was our first time working with DigitalOcean

Accomplishments We're Proud Of

We're proud to bring an open-source photo editor with multi-functional capabilities. It will become a great tool for photographers and even enthusiasts wanting to join the field.

What We Learned

We learned a great deal about system design and producing production-level software. We also gained extensive knowledge about image processing, shaders/filters, and some linear algebra. Additionally, we learned the importance of time management, as we didn't have enough time to implement all the features we envisioned. Overall, we learned about teamwork, collaboration, and what production-level software development feels like.