You can now try ClipDrop, a new app that lets your phone camera easily capture objects from your surroundings and position them in desktop apps. It's a neat twist on AR, which renders the physical world interactive instead of projecting digital images into the world around you. Promotional videos of the beta app demonstrate that it is capable of photographing anything from plants to TVs and then easily imported into documents as cropped items.
Digne says the tool lets you import images and even text from books , for example, to a number of apps and websites, including Photoshop (where ClipDrop has a plugin available to allow artifacts to be dropped as a new layer with an editable mask), Google Docs, PowerPoint, Figma, Canva, and Pitch. Of course, you can also just use the software to capture photos of everyday things around you to share as you would usually do with iOS and Android.
In addition to the iOS and Android applications, the program is also available for Windows and MacOS, enabling you to capture images and text from your desktop or the web and easily import them into documents.
The concept behind ClipDrop first appeared as a technological demo back in May and soon gained a lot of attention. Developers Cyril Diagne and Jonathan Blanchet told Gizmodo that they had over 100,000 people registered on their beta waiting list who wanted to test out the app and have spent the last few months converting this early demo into a commercial product.
While ClipDrop is now publicly accessible, Diagne warns that it's still in beta and that users should expect some "bugs and rough edges." When we tested it for ourselves, we found that it was a good job to select things from a cluttered desk using an iPhone X, while Gizmodo notes that it could sometimes get confused by shadows or objects crowded close together.
Aaand here it is..!!!
— Cyril Diagne (@cyrildiagne) October 22, 2020
After months of hard work with @jblanchefr, @ClipDropApp beta (AR Copy Paste) is now publicly available on #Android, #iOS, #macOS, and #Windows
https://t.co/52eLMEfXNR
Here's a thread of what you can already do with it ↓ 1/n#ML #AR #AI pic.twitter.com/0fQJQ8KRBv
You get five free photo clips with a software download, but more clips need a subscription. ClipDrop is currently priced at $39.99 per year, but after November 20, the price rises to $79.99 per year, or $9.99 per month. Clipping text, however, is easy, according to Gizmodo.
