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Zenfolio. Going AI. Our Visual 1st sponsor, Zenfolio, announces PhotoRefine.ai, a desktop app for photographers to automatically group, rate and cull images after a photo session. PhotoRefine.ai applies AI to analyze a set of images, then uses blur detection, closed/blinking eye evaluation, image sharpness and exposure to rate each individual image and highlight the best of a group. The app will find and group images according to individuals or categories, leveraging facial-recognition intelligence. PhotoRefine.ai is provided to Zenfolio’s ProSuite plan and Advanced plan subscribers, or can be purchased as an add-on to Zenfolio’s other subscription plans.
TikTok. Launching text-to-image AI generator. If 2021 was the year of the NFT, 2022 is the year of generative AI, according to friend of our Visual 1st conference, Kaptur editor Paul Melcher. TikTok is the latest one on the generative AI bandwagon. It silently launched a new in-app text-to-image AI generator that lets users type in a prompt and receive an image that can be used as the background in their videos. The effect is called “AI greenscreen” and can be accessed via the short-form video app’s camera screen. Not the fanciest text-to-image generator, but, you know, with TikTok it’s scale that matters …
Pixelmator. Joining the subscription bandwagon. As so many photo editing apps before it, Pixelmator Photo, the iOS photo editing mobile app that supports RAW image files from more than 600 cameras, is transitioning towards a subscription model at $23.99 per year. The mobile-first company also announced that it is developing a desktop photo editing app for the Mac.
Edge Imaging. Acquisition spree. Edge Imaging announces it has acquired 4 companies within the school photography and yearbook industry: Adanac Images, D&H School Photos, Platinum Photography, and Picaboo Yearbooks. Edge Imaging has now acquired a total of 9 companies since its inception, five of which have concluded since Walter Capital Partners invested in Edge Imaging in 2018.
ON1. Upping the masking ante. Past Visual 1st presenter ON1 announced that it’s developing innovative masking and selective editing functionality called Super Select AI, which is based on what ON1 refers to as Semantic Mapping: AI technology that breaks up the photos into various regions, knows what subject matter is within those regions and can create adjustment smart masks for those regions with a single click.
Taopix. 2022r1 release. Visual 1st sponsor Taopix announces its 2022r1 release, featuring upselling, automated workflows, multi-device image uploading, and HEIC image format improvements. The latter enables its customers to use photos from Apple (and other HEIC-generating vendors) without needing to convert to JPEG first.
Snap. Back on earth. Only announced late-April, Snap’s cute palm-sized selfie drone, Pixy, is rumored to be discontinued. It’s that pesky new era we’re now living in that prioritizes short-term bottom line again over way-out-there experiments, with companies like Snap bracing for that much heralded economic downturn that so far keeps mostly eluding us – hope we keep it that way …
Kandao. Viewmaster 2.0. Are you old enough to remember the Viewmaster gadget that let you view reels of 3D stereoscopic images? Now you can create these images yourself with the $369 Kandao QooCam EGO camera, as well as view them with the included stereo 3D viewer or a VR headset.
Instagram. Copycatting. Instagram is testing a new feature called Candid Challenges, which bears a striking resemblance to BeReal, a photo sharing app super popular among Gen. Z and, as of this writing, #3 among the top free iOS app downloads and reportedly having a $600M valuation. Candid Challenger users apparently see a notification at a different time each day to snap a photo of their surroundings. Upon getting the prompt, the Instagram camera will also open with both front and rear-facing shooters, and give users a two-minute window to snap a photo. Yes: it’s a BeReal clone.
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