Hey makers — Chris here.

I spent 30 years cutting motion pictures and television. Every production taught me the same lesson: continuity photos aren't decorative — they're working records. The reshoot is Tuesday, the actor has a scar that has to match last Thursday's scene, and if you can't find the right reference photo in 90 seconds, the production is paying for your file system.

I built PictaBase because I needed a visual database, not a media library. It's the tool I wish I'd had on set — and the same pain shows up in real estate, construction documentation, insurance, archives, and any team that relies on photos as working records.

A few things I'm proud of technically:

- Pixel-blind server. Image bytes go browser → S3 directly via presigned POST. Zero bytes touch my infrastructure.

- No lock-in. Every tag, note, and AI label is written as a `.meta.json` sidecar in your own bucket. If PictaBase disappears tomorrow, your data is yours in standard JSON.

- Real engineering discipline. 287 backend PHP files at PHPStan Level 8, 488 PHPUnit tests, strictly typed React frontend. The codebase has been through two adversarial AI security review passes and a dedicated pre-launch efficiency audit.

- An LTD built to survive beyond launch day. Egress is controlled via CloudFront with project-scoped signed cookies; the cost model was built before the deal was priced.

Try it free — no credit card. The 250 MB Free Tier has zero feature gating. Break it, poke at it, audit the API.

Product Hunt today only: Use code phearly30 for 30% off any LTD tier.

I'll be in the comments all day. Find a real bug, report it, and I'll send you an extra LTD code on the house.

Thank you to everyone voting today — it genuinely means a lot.

— Chris (IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0174749)