Goia: photo editor for the artist in you

Most photo apps help users look fake. Goia helps them make art. One-tap AI tools for restoration, backgrounds, and creative effects turn photos into stories worth sharing. Start creating for joy!

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Inspiration

We built Goia because we're tired of photo apps that make people feel inadequate. Every editing app promises to make you "flawless".. smoother skin, whiter teeth etc. But what about making you an artist? That's what we wanted to explore: can we come up with a tool that doesn't try to replace human creativity, but to amplify it?

What it does

So, Goia transforms everyday photos into artistic expressions through AI-powered creative tools. Unlike traditional editors focused on "fixing" you, we offer: Artistry: Apply 300+ creative backgrounds, generate AI scenes, or completely reimagine your photo's set and setting Restoration: Gently breathe life back into damaged photos, colorize B&W memories, upscale old pictures Co-creation: Remove or blur backgrounds, erase objects, expand beyond frame boundaries Playfulness: Add custom text overlays, draw directly on images, apply artistic filters that celebrate rather than hide stuff

We do all that with the main goal of keeping the essence of your photo alive.

How we built it

We started by inverting the typical photo app architecture. Instead of the beauty-first algorithms, we leaned heavily on art history, creative expression, and emotional resonance.

Technical Stack: SwiftUI for native iOS performance Fine-tuned Stable Diffusion for creative generation Integrating with Replicate for fast iterations A cool company called Revenue Cat for paywalls and AB tests for different types of subs

The UI philosophy: Make it feel like finger-painting, not Photoshop. Every interaction should spark joy :)

Challenges we ran into

The manual gesture Resize and Rotate feature is quite problematic - we had to temporarily disable it due to some buggy bugs and to replace it with some scrolling bards, but we'll get back to using that as it's much more fun to use Also, balancing instant results with artistic quality is a little tricky. We had to let go of some UX polish in order to make sure we finish in time for the Shipaton deadline. Aaand credit economics: trying to make it affordable for people, and at the same time sustainable for us in terms of revenue

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One-tap magic that actually works. We're running quite some complex AI operations behind the scenes, while it feels relatively smooth for users Zero beauty filters: We resisted every temptation to add skin smoothing and stuff like that :)

What we learned

We've been testing it with some early users and it was a revelation to see that most people don't lack creativity, but they kinda feel like they lack permission.

What's next for Goia: the AI Photo Editor for the Artist in You

What's next for Goia: the AI Photo Editor for the Artist in You

Bring back manual gesture resize and rotate Art History Mode: Learn each week about a specific art movement or artist, and get prompts about how to create in that style. We're very excited about this one! Add a Remix feature for other user's creations

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