Photo Inlay

Over 50,000 Plays Within Days

We are happy to announce that Photo Inlay has amassed over 50,000 lens plays within days of soft launch!

Try it here

What it does

Photo Inlay lets you choose any photo from your camera roll and magically pops it into the AR world. You can move it around, skew it, resize, and cycle through 9 different frame styles and finally place it where you want it in the world. When you’re ready, snap a photo to keep for yourself or share with people around you.

Inspiration

I found myself looking for wall art for my home office, and I had to photoshop a few options on the wall just to visualise what they might look like in the room. I thought it would have been great if I could just “import” my photo into the wall so I could see it like real.

We take beautiful photos all the time, whether it’s to capture a moment, or to save something you’d like to keep in your phone. What if you could bring them out of your phone? That was my inspiration for this project, I had many meaningful photos in my phone that I wanted to take with me in the real world, frame it up, hold it or place it on my desk.

How we built it

We used some assets from Snap, namely UI Button, Media Picker, Rounded Image Material and Hint Tap. To put things together, we have an Image to display the selected image, where the texture is set to the Media Picker. Then we created a series of materials that can be applied to the image for various frame designs. Finally, we implemented the script to cycle through these materials on the screen tap event, and also controls the media picker visibility upon image selected, and handled the “SELECT” button event to show the media picker again when the user want to re-select.

Challenges we ran into

It can be challenging to combine the various assets in a way that creates an intuitive user experience. For instance, we wanted to design the media gallery so that it disappears once a photo is chosen, allowing for more open space for the user and at the same time make it easily available when a user wants to choose a different photo. We also wanted an intuitive way for users to cycle through different frame designs. All of these little details were additional work we thought was worth while.

Future Plans and Monetization

We definitely want to introduce more styles, and we’re also considering the feasibility of having the option to choose multiple photos. On the monetisation front, it is still early for specifics but we are exploring several options like Snap Ads and even partnership with art and decorative items stores, like Displate.

Screenshots

Built With

• javascript
• lensstudio