React-Ionic VS crisp.photos

crisp.photos's answer:

• React and Vite for the interface
• ONNX Runtime Web running the AI models on WebGPU, with a WebAssembly fallback for devices without GPU support
• Web Workers, so upscaling never freezes the page
• Tiled inference, so large images fit in GPU memory
• 4x-UltraSharpV2 Lite (photos) and 2x-AnimeSharpV3 (anime), licensed from Kim2091
• WebCodecs for the before/after video generator
• Static hosting with Docker and nginx, and Plausible for privacy-friendly analytics

crisp.photos's answer:

I wanted to know whether a serious upscaling model could run entirely in a browser. Making it fast was the hard part. Browsers can now use the graphics card through WebGPU, but the model I wanted used operations the browser's runtime couldn't run on the GPU, so each image kept bouncing between graphics card and processor. I rewrote those parts of the model by hand until everything stayed on the GPU. That cut processing time by about two thirds.

crisp.photos's answer:

Your photo never leaves your computer. crisp.photos runs a full AI upscaling model inside the browser tab, on your own graphics card, so nothing is uploaded to a server. It turns a 512×512 image into a 2048×2048 one in about 10 seconds on a MacBook.

Getting there took real work. The original model file ran partly on the CPU in the browser, and a 1080×920 photo took 114 seconds. I rewrote the model so every step runs on the GPU, and the same photo now takes 37 seconds. The output is identical to the original model's.

crisp.photos's answer:

Because it's free with no catch. In June I checked the ten upscalers that rank highest on Google, including Adobe, Canva, Upscale.media and iLoveIMG. All ten process your image on their servers, and most use credits, size caps, sign-ups or watermarks to push you towards a paid plan.

crisp.photos has none of that: no account, no watermark, no daily limit, no upload. You can queue a whole batch and download them as one zip. The model behind it, 4x-UltraSharpV2, is one of the most respected open upscaling models, and I licensed it from its author, Kim2091.

crisp.photos's answer:

People with a photo that's too small or too blurry for what they need: an old family picture going to print, a product shot for a shop listing, a screenshot for a slide. They want a bigger, sharper version in a minute, without installing Photoshop or creating another account.

A second group is anime and manga fans. For them there's a separate upscaler tuned for line art, the free waifu2x alternative on crisp.photos/anime-upscaler.

crisp.photos's answer:

crisp.photos is free and has no accounts, so there are no customers in the usual sense, and I deliberately don't track who uploads what. In the last 30 days about 1,500 people used it, spending 7.6 minutes per visit on average.