Addifect Lens
Paint living shader effects onto any photo or AI art
Hey Indie Hackers! 👋
I’ve always loved generative art and creative coding, but every time I wanted to breathe life into static 2D images or UI assets, I ran into two big walls:
1. The Technical Barrier: Writing custom GLSL fragment/vertex shaders, managing framebuffers, and wiring up mouse listeners takes hours of boilerplate code for every single graphic.
2. The Walled-Garden Trap: Most modern creative web tools lock your assets, canvas states, and configurations behind closed proprietary databases. If the platform goes down or doubles its subscription, your interactive art vanishes with it.
I wanted something different: a fast, visual way to treat shaders as paintbrushes, combined with 100% data ownership.
So I built Addifect Lens.
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### 🎨 What is Addifect Lens?
It’s an in-browser visual studio that lets you paint GPU-accelerated WebGL shaders directly onto flat images with simple brush strokes:
* 17+ Real-Time Shader Passes: Brush on effects like Liquid Glass, Water Trail, Chromatic Split, Holo Glitch, Luminous Glow, and Comic Halftone.
* Mouse-Reactive & Dynamic: Painted areas actively distort, glow, or ripple as users move their cursor over the canvas.
* Non-Destructive Compositing: Layer multiple shader passes over custom mask channels without destroying your base artwork.
* Zero Vendor Lock-In: Your project files and embeds commit directly to your own GitHub repository. You own the raw code and assets—no walled gardens.
* Lightweight Engine: Built on a custom, highly optimized WebGL rendering loop to ensure 60 FPS performance without massive runtime bundles.
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### 🛠️ The Architecture & Roadmap
Rather than relying on heavy third-party 3D frameworks, I engineered an atomic multi-pass render pipeline (FBO chaining) so effects execute cleanly directly in the browser.
Right now, I’m bootstrapping the project and launching a lifetime founding deal ($39) to fund the next wave of engine updates, including custom GLSL imports, audio-reactive modulators, and CRT scanline passes.
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### 🧪 Try the Sandbox & Give Feedback
You can test the tool directly in your browser without creating an account:
👉 Live Sandbox: https://studio.addifect.com/sandbox
I’d love to hear your honest feedback:
1. How does the canvas and mouse responsiveness feel on your device?
2. What shader brushes or compositing controls would make this most useful for your own landing pages or creative projects?
Thanks for checking it out! 🚀
5 Comments
The zero vendor lock-in angle is interesting alongside the visual editor itself. Curious which part people notice first when they try the sandbox.
Thanks! It's definitely a two-stage reaction. The visual shader engine is the hook—people love the tactile feel of painting WebGL effects and testing the mouse ripples.
But the zero vendor lock-in is the anchor. Creators have been burned so many times by walled gardens and proprietary databases. When they realize the assets are entirely portable and commit directly to their own workspace, the conversation completely changes. The visuals get them in the door, but the open architecture keeps them there!
That distinction is interesting. Sounds like the product is doing more than one job in the user’s mind. Would be good to continue this conversation — what’s the best email to reach you at?
I'd love to dig into that with you! I actually prefer chatting over on 𝕏—my DMs are completely open. Drop me a message at @lahirunayak and let's keep the conversation going.
I don’t use X much, so email would be easier for me. What’s the best email to reach you at?