[thrusong]

I built four tools that looked and functioned almost exactly like this about six years ago, but using PHP.

They were called "Picture Perfect," "Portrait Perfect," "Partner Perfect," and "Process Perfect."

I initially developed Picture Perfect for my reporter colleagues at a news radio station to use for our website, and they loved it.

Just drag a photo on the site, crop it exactly how you want to our website's exact aspect, and hit download to save it to a work machine.

My homophobic boss didn't like that I had this on my own server and didn't get approval to share it first, so he ended up sending the link to SoCast (a CMS company) and they built the functionality into the backend a week later. Whatever- it made our lives easier.

Then I moved on and worked at a small local news blog site, and repurposed these tools to use there. We had a quota of articles to write, post, and schedule on social media per shift, and these got 45 minutes of manual photo editing down to five minutes per shift.

These were the tools:

Picture Perfect: Drag and drop a photo, then draw a crop box on it and output exactly the dimension you need.

Portrait Perfect: Drag and drop a portrait photo, and output a version of it centred on a blown-up, blurry version of itself.

Partner Perfect: Drag and drop two photos, draw a crop box on each, and output a single image of them sitting side by side (useful for two portraits of sports stars, or when there were two mugshots).

Process Perfect: Drag and drop a photo and either output a black and white version or a version with a colour multiply effect applied.

When I left that job, I pulled them offline, but recently started work on a site that merged all four of them (behind a login, where you can create any aspect and save your creations). It's buggy and slow, but I haven't had the time to finish polishing it: https://phototools.prezince.com/

But either way, it definitely provided value, and I'm glad someone has done it using only front end code. Good work!

[worker767424]

> My homophobic boss

This is either the opposite of how people used to say things that weren't cool were "gay," or you just added a useless detail to the story for I'm not sure what reason.

[thrusong]

He actively tried to cripple my career because of my sexuality, going as far to start putting me on non-broadcasting shifts because I "sounded too gay" (which I don't, I just don't have an AM voice that sounds like I've been smoking cigars for two decades).

In his words, it "affected the trust listeners had in the station."

So, he wasn't pleased I built a tool in two hours that he couldn't deliver in at least a year.

I didn't even hide the tool. I gave it to two senior staffers and sent it his way right away.

[UncleEntity]

> My homophobic boss didn't like that I had this on my own server and didn't get approval to share it first...

> When I left that job, I pulled them offline...

Sounds like the first boss had the right idea...and obviously not the homophobia.

[thrusong]

I'm pretty sure you're allowed to build little utility websites and share them with your friends on Facebook.

Extra context: people complained about how tedious the SoCast CMS was to use for years before I got there.

Either way, whatever, as long as the tool effected change, I got what I wanted for myself and my co-workers.

[fpgaminer]

> I'm pretty sure you're allowed to build little utility websites and share them with your friends on Facebook.

Your friends, sure, but not necessarily your coworkers, depending on the context. The company might be under various legal obligations with regards to how those photos are used, and sending them to an unapproved third party could put them in serious legal hot waters. That's regardless of your intentions.

I doubt that's the case here and trust your assessment of the situation. I also think the comment you're replying to wasn't particularly tactful. But yeah, it could be an issue in some situations and, like it or not, as engineers we always have to keep an eye out for this kind of stuff.

[thrusong]

Fair enough. Thanks for the tactful and insightful comment.

[nitrogen]

Depends on the state, but often if you make something that relates to your employer's business, even on your own time, your employer owns it.

[thrusong]

I don't know the laws here in Canada but I was always under the impression if you do something on your own time with your own equipment, you own the IP. It's been that way at several of my employers in the creative fields.

I only spent two hours building the initial Picture Perfect prototype, so at least it got something done when my former boss couldn't deliver something after two years of people begging for an easier way.