u/hermanphi

https://preview.redd.it/ad8s89bfpfah1.png?width=443&format=png&auto=webp&s=f59a84ee767b7a29e457165c41aab35b41ee079e

So, last Friday, Pigment was finally approved on aescripts after weeks (or rather months) of work.

I originally started building Pigment to improve my own workflow, but the more features I added, the more it became clear that it could become a real product.

I'm not making this post as an advertisement because my product is already succesful by my standards, but I know some people will ask for the link anyway, so here it is: https://aescripts.com/pigment/

Here are a few things I learned during the process.

The aescripts submission process is long

• From my first submission to the final approval, the whole process took about three weeks.
• From what I understand, a lot of that comes from the fact that aescripts handles every step manually. Every time I submitted a new version, it usually took between two to four business days before I got a answer.
• At first, I found that frustrating. Looking back, though, the feedback they gave me made a huge difference.
• For example, they had me rework my product page several times. At the time it felt like a chore, but it pushed me to build a much cleaner HTML product page that looks far better than what I originally had in mind.
• Instead of seeing the waiting time as lost time, I used every gap between reviews to polish Pigment, improve the UI, fix bugs, and create better marketing assets. I genuinely think that's one of the reasons the launch went well.

Having friends test the product was a game changer

• At one point I thought the extension was basically finished, so I sent it to a few friends for feedback. That's when I realized I wasn't even close to being done lol
• When you've been working on something for weeks/months, you eventually become blind to its flaws. Every single tester found things that seemed completely obvious in hindsight.
• I received a ton of feedback, and I ended up implementing almost everything they suggested. Pigment ended up being a much better product because of it.

The trial version was surprisingly difficult

• aescripts recommended that I include a trial version. Their framework provides a time-limited trial, but that wasn't really compatible with Pigment.
• Pigment can generate color palettes from text prompts using AI. I initially experimented with running everything locally, but I wasn't happy with the quality of the results, so I decided to rely on OpenAI instead.
• One thing that was really important to me was that users wouldn't have to pay a monthly fee or buy tokens. Everyone who purchases Pigment gets unlimited generations, and I simply cover the costs myself. That works because paid users easily offset the generation costs.
• The main challenge was designing a fair trial. Because every AI generation consumes resources on my side, unlimited trial access wasn't really an option.
• So I built my own custom trial system : Some features are disabled, AI generations are limited to 10, you can access 10 of the 30 built-in palettes, and you can save generated palettes but not reload your own custom ones. The eyedropper tool, for example, is completely disabled in the trial.
• Looking back, I think I may have made the trial both too restrictive and too generous at the same time. Some users might be put off by the locked features, while others may find that the built-in palettes are enough for their needs and never feel the need to upgrade.
• My guess is that this leads to a lower trial-to-purchase conversion than I'd like. But this is my very first plugin so I lack data, maybe with the next plugins I'll realise it's actually a very good ratio.

Overall

Despite the amount of work it required, I'm extremely happy with how things turned out.

Pigment already has more than 50 users, and so far I've received nothing but positive feedback.

I'm already working on version 1.1, which will include several quality-of-life improvements, as well as one feature I'm particularly excited about: persistent palettes. The idea is that a palette will be shared across your entire project. If you update one of its colors, every linked color throughout all of your comps will update automatically.

Building and launching a paid AE extension was a lot more work than I expected, but it has also been one of the most rewarding projects I've ever worked on, hopefully my next project which I already submitted to AEscript will end up being as rewarding too, I can't wait!