Hero section (video card background)
Time Machine
First successful creation! (Before improving the prompt)
Neon Dreams

Inspiration

We've all wondered how we'd look in different time periods. What if your family photos were taken in the roaring 1920s or the psychedelic 1960s? With the rise of AI image generation and our collective nostalgia for different eras, we wanted to create a magical time machine for memories. The idea sparked from seeing how powerfully people connect with vintage aesthetics on social media, combined with the amazing capabilities of modern AI to authentically recreate historical photography styles.

What it does

New Year, Same Me is a photo time machine that instantly transforms any uploaded image through 10+ authentic historical eras. Users upload a photo and can see themselves as:

1860s daguerreotype portraits with Victorian styling 1920s Jazz Age photos with art deco elements 1950s American Dream suburban imagery 1980s neon-soaked portraits 2010s vintage hipster Instagram filters And more!

Each transformation uses AI to authentically recreate the photography technology, fashion, and aesthetic of that era while preserving the original photo's emotion and composition.

How I built it

What started as an attempt at the One-Shot competition turned into a concept that I really loved, so I decided to spend the last 24 hours of the hackathon building this app. I used Claude to generate the initial prompt and the era descriptions, and Gemini as my project manager. The app was built completely in Bolt, with the only external edits being image uploads to Github and Supabase Edge Function debugging.

Challenges I ran into

Prompt Engineering: Creating consistent AI prompts that preserve facial features while authentically recreating historical photography styles required extensive testing and refinement. Era Authenticity: Balancing historical accuracy with visual appeal - ensuring each era felt genuine without being too obscure or losing the original photo's charm. Performance Optimization: Handling image uploads and AI generation calls efficiently while maintaining smooth user experience and managing API costs. Responsive Design: Creating a vintage-inspired interface that works beautifully across all devices while maintaining the immersive time-travel aesthetic. Time Constraints: Since I gave myself only 24 hours to complete this project, time was definitely a challenge. However, I chose to do a last-minute submission because I thrive under pressure and like the challenge.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Viral Potential: Created an experience people immediately want to share. The emotional connection of seeing familiar photos in historical contexts is incredibly powerful. Technical Excellence: Successfully integrated complex AI image generation with a polished, responsive web interface built entirely in Bolt.new. Authentic Historical Recreation: Each era captures the photography technology, fashion, and aesthetic of its time period through carefully engineered AI prompts. Design Innovation: The vintage aesthetic with modern UX creates a unique visual identity that stands out while remaining highly usable. The app is beautiful and it took careful prompting in Midjourney and ChatGPT to get the gorgeous hero section.

What I learned

I had never sent an image to the gpt-image-1 API to edit/generate a new image. I also discovered the importance of specific, detailed prompts for consistent AI generation results across different eras and photo types.

What's next for New Year, Same Me: Photo Time Machine

Next steps would be to add image storage in Supabase, payment for subscriptions, and social media integration. I would like the app to match the aspect ratio of the provided image (it currently defaults to 1024x1024 for every image) and I plan to make this a mobile app. Once that is done, marketing is the next step, with social media UGC ads.

username: [email protected] password: password123