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PlanetArt. Acquiring PersonalizationMall.com and Things Remembered.
Past Visual 1st presenter PlanetArt, the company behind 10+ photo printing and personalized gifting brands including FreePrints, Gifts. com, and CafePress (acquired from Shutterfly/Snapfish), has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire PersonalizationMall. com and Things Remembered from 1-800-Flowers. com for around $45M in cash.
This marks PlanetArt's first acquisition since its spinoff from Claranova.
PersonalizationMall recently introduced photo, video, audio, and AI-designed gifts to its product lineup.
Remento. Capturing not just grandma's memories but those of the cute new baby too.
So you conduct a survey and find that 94% of new moms want a baby book, but only 34% have completed one. Past Visual 1st panelist Remento's answer: they just launched the "Baby Book of Firsts," a tool designed to help new parents effortlessly turn their baby's first-year milestones into a custom hardcover keepsake.
Using Remento's Speech-to-Story technology, busy parents upload their baby's photos and speak into their phones — whether their thoughts are well articulated or rambling — and Remento then automatically converts those spoken memories into polished written text.
The printed book also features embedded QR codes, allowing families to scan pages and listen to the original audio recordings in the parents' own voices. Available for $99, the package includes a one-year subscription and credit for a finished hardcover book.
Google. New website for checking GenAI content.
Google has launched a public website allowing anyone to check if an image, video, or audio clip was created using AI. The tool relies on SynthID, Google's watermarking technology integrated into its AI models and tools like Gemini, Veo and Chrome.
OpenAI and Nvidia also support SynthID, with OpenAI maintaining its own site for checking content. Apple is said to be adding support soon, too, while Microsoft and Meta on the other hand have their own standards for watermarking and verifying content.
As we also discussed in our fireside chat with C2PA Steering Committee member Andy Parsons last week at Visual 1st, SynthID is one of several approaches that complement C2PA by making AI-origin signals more durable — i.e., harder to remove — but note that SynthID does not embed C2PA metadata, unlike some other watermarking solutions on the market.
Popsa. Launching AI curation features.
Curation, curation, curation — this was the theme that kept coming up in various sessions at Visual 1st last week (stay tuned for more perspectives on what was discussed at the conference).
Along these lines, personalized product company Popsa launched Memories, an AI curation feature on its iOS and Android apps, aimed at helping consumers find meaningful experiences in their photo library by automatically picking the best photos, removing duplicates, and curating them into beautiful albums.
Memories launches with two collections: Popsa Rewinds, which curates highlights from the past month or year into one story, and Popsa Journeys, which instantly resurfaces forgotten holidays and day trips.
RPI Print & Mediaclip. Global personalized printing meets scalable product personalization engine.
Two Visual 1st Gold sponsors announced their partnership right before our conference. The collaboration combines Mediaclip's scalable product personalization engine with RPI Print's digital printing infrastructure and white-label fulfillment network.
The joint solutions enable brands, retailers, and platforms to easily launch, scale, and expand custom product lines across international markets.
By connecting front-end customization directly to end-to-end global fulfillment, Mediaclip and RPI Print aim to streamline the entire order lifecycle — from design to door.
Evoto. New Editing and Culling Features.
Also shortly before Visual 1st, Evoto announced version 8.0, introducing automated workflow tools, story-based culling (yes, curation, curation, curation), and updated desktop features such as precision skin retouching and generative expansion.
The release also adds mobile tethered capture capabilities and brings AI skin and facial retouching tools to video editing via plug-ins for DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro.
Additionally, Evoto launched Asset Hub, a built-in marketplace allowing photographers to buy and sell presets, backdrops, and AI looks to generate extra income.
Adobe & Topaz Labs. A whopping $340M acquisition.
Just how urgently did Adobe need Topaz Labs to boost its AI capabilities for image and video enhancement? Forbes revealed the price tag: a whopping $340M!
Topaz Labs specializes in AI tools that — among other features — sharpen, upscale, and clean up both still images and videos.
This acquisition is expected to expand Adobe's Firefly suite, allowing professionals to restore archival visuals, refine low-light shots, and bring AI-generated videos up to professional quality. Topaz's Neurostream technology enables processing on local devices or in the cloud.
For now, at least, Topaz will remain a standalone unit within Adobe, with CEO Eric Yang, a Visual 1st panelist last year, continuing to lead.
Mixbook. Moving beyond printed photobooks to a “home for memories.”
Mixbook has announced a major expansion beyond traditional printed photobooks with the launch of a new iOS app designed to serve as a comprehensive "home for memories." The app uses on-device photo analysis and user input to automatically discover, filter, and organize buried camera-roll photos into curated (yes, curation, curation, curation) chronological stories.
Users can personalize these moments and transform them into digital Memory Art, videos, magazines, or physical printed photobooks.
The app is free to use on iOS, with an optional $9.99-per-month Mixbook+ subscription available that includes premium digital features and monthly print credits.
In addition, the company introduced The Memory Project, an initiative advised by cognitive psychologist Dr. Christie Chung to study the science of storytelling and how it builds connection.
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