How Mark grew his App Store screenshot creation app to 4500 users

Meet Mark DiFranco from Ontario, Canada.

Mark has been building iOS apps both professionally and recreationally for over 13 years.

Currently his focus is on Picasso, a popular App Store screenshot creation app. Mark is also building other apps though. In fact, building apps is his full time occupation.

The story told by Mark DiFranco

Why Picasso?

The idea for Picasso came in the summer of 2023 when I was updating my other app, Memento. I had just added some new features, and I wanted to update the screenshots to match.

The issue was that Memento supports 15 languages and multiple platforms. With 6 screenshots to display, that resulted in over 500 screenshots to update and upload to App Store Connect. 🤯 I had Fastlane set up, but it was very slow and flakey, and was very time intensive. It also was pretty limited in terms of creativity possibilities.

It was at this point I was reminded of some code I wrote that could convert a SwiftUI view into a png image. I thought it would be pretty easy to create an app that allowed you to configure views representing your screenshots in SwiftUI, and export the screenshots to the correct size as a png. The only problem was I barely had enough time for Memento with my full time job, let alone another app.

Fast forward a few months to November 2023, and I was laid off from my job. While unfortunate and unexpected, I did get a sizeable severance, which could afford me time to build my own apps. I decided to take the dive, with my first project being my new idea around App Store screenshots.

Picasso was born baby.

Getting user feedback, iterating, and marketing the app

Progress was quick in the beginning, I was able to create a basic editor and support for some iPhone and iPad screenshot sizes within a month. Picasso eventually launched on December 24th, 2023 (a great Christmas present!).

My plan was to sell different packages of functionality for a one-time cost; one price for advanced design tools, one for localization, one for App Store Connect upload, etc. But the problem was the prices for these packages were too high. I didn’t want to set the price lower (given the amount of value I was providing), but users didn’t want to take a risk on a new app.

Things weren’t picking up as I expected. I was getting a few bites, but there were too many hurdles in people’s way.

That’s when I saw a post on X from another screenshot designer. They were running a contest where one responder in the thread would get selected to have their screenshots redesigned for free. I loved this idea so much!

I thought it would be super cool to do something similar for Picasso and get first hand experience seeing what people would want from a screenshot tool.

Project Facelift

Right around this time, I had been in touch with Dave Verwer about having Picasso featured in the iOS Dev Weekly for this week. I quickly spun up a logo and page on my website describing the idea, and sent another email to Dave asking him to please mention the new contest: Project Facelift

Contestants would submit a link to their app, and I’d select one each month for new screenshots. They would get help with one of the more difficult parts of releasing an app (designing compelling screenshots), and I would get a better idea of what people want from a tool like this.

I would constantly get feedback from them throughout the month on the creative direction. Anytime there was something Picasso couldn’t do yet, I’d build it into Picasso and then use it for their screenshots.

The Expenses app

One example of where this really helped was with Expenses by Hiroki Nagasawa. His existing screenshots supported 15 different languages, and I wanted to make sure I maintained that with the new designs.

The app had support for localization at the time, but in order to import the localized screenshots (the snapshots of his app’s UI), I had to manually drag each one in. After going through this process several times and spending hours on it, I finally decided to bite the bullet and build a bulk import feature. This was based on Fastlane’s screenshot output (organized into folders by language), but works with other system.

Now a process that used to take me hours takes less than a second. That’s something I likely wouldn’t have prioritized had I not felt the pain first hand.

The Söka app

Another example of this paying off was when I attended Deep Dish Swift, a Swift developer conference. The developer I was working with for the month of May (Roddy Munro and his app, Söka) happened to be attending as well.

I decided it would be cool to design his screenshots in person at the event. On top of being able to iterate quickly (we went from idea to finished results in a couple of days, mostly thanks to the bulk import mentioned above), other developers nearby would see what we were up to and join in. It was a super fun experience that helped spread the word at the event. By the end of the event, people were recognizing me as the Picasso guy 😂.

Each winner would get a free lifetime pass to Picasso, and get promoted by Picasso’s X account once the screenshots were done. This started to build some virality, as other devs would see the results organically.

Picasso in numbers

I likely reached 100 users sometime within the first two months of the Project Facelift contest, but I don’t recall exactly. There were 6 winners before I ended it in June 2024. By the time it was over, I had over 40 people sign up for Project Facelift, a well featured app, and over 1000 users of Picasso.

Today, Picasso has over 4500 users and over 75k screenshots exported.

Picasso is currently making ~CA$200 a month, but that is only including the recurring subscriptions. Week passes and lifetime passes are more sporadic.

The business model

Today Picasso offers the full screenshot editor and file export for free, so if you’re willing to manually upload to ASC you don’t need to pay anything.

If you need something more advanced (localization, bulk import from Fastlane, direct upload to App Store Connect), you’ll need Picasso Pro. Picasso Pro can be bought in the form of a non-renewing week pass, a renewing month or year pass, or a one-time lifetime payment.

I wanted to make sure the Pro features were accessible to both established developers as well as smaller developers who might not have as much budget.

Reach out to Mark DiFranco:

• Email

• X