Profoto. IPO. Last year's Best of Show Visual 1st Awards winner Profoto, makers of lightshaping equipment and software, has registered to go public tomorrow on Nasdaq Stockholm [Swedish link]. Anticipated market cap: SEK 2.64 billion (~$310M).

Profoto. Profoto Raw. Last week, Profoto launched a new iOS and Android camera app for lighting control as well as photo capture, which includes a new RAW format and a “Classic mode” that gives the photographer full control of their smartphone as if it were a standard camera.

PastBook. Launching auto-curation and layout app. PastBook, Visual 1st Best Business Potential Visual 1st Awards winner in 2017 and best known for its one-click web app for creating photobooks from for a user’s Facebook or Instagram photos, launches its first major iOS app. By selecting a date range, location or album from a user’s smartphone camera roll, the app quickly analyzes the image quality and context, and removes duplicates or similar photos. Once the AI has picked the best photos for the final book, it automatically groups them into curated page layouts and presents the user a preview that is easy to view and edit. The final version then syncs with a network of international printers for producing the book. PastBook also announced it posted $14.3M in revenues in 2019, with a projected tripling of revenues estimated for 2020. 

Capsule. Expanding into HR. Collaborative video platform maker Capsule launches a version catering to HR-specific use cases, such as employees wanting to share their take on their company’s culture with prospective hires or staffers wanting to sharing personal “welcome” selfie-videos with new employees.

Shutterfly. Expanding into home décor creator community. Shutterfly agreed to buy Spoonflower for $225M. Spoonflower is an online community that enabling its users to make and upload their own designs for use on customized premium fabric, wallpaper or other home décor products.

Softbank. Leica-branded smartphone. Softbank announces the Leitz Phone 1, a Leica-branded smartphone for the Japanese market. The phone comes equipped with a 20-megapixel, 1-inch sensor — currently the biggest on the market — and a 19mm-equivalent f/1.9 ultrawide lens.

EyeQ. Expanding into video. Long-time image correction technology developer, EyeQ – né Athentech – announces Perfectly Clear Video, a solution for enhancing videos in real time, such as detection and then brightening of the faces in a live video conference, removal of glaring tint from a selfie video, or gaining important detail out of surveillance footage. Perfectly Clear Video can be deployed on IoT devices, servers, desktop or mobile applications.

Perfect Corp. Integrating with Facebook and Instagram. Perfect Corp., the company behind the YouCam beauty app, has integrated with Facebook’s Shop Ads to provide beauty product shoppers with an AR experience to preview how the beauty products would look on them.

Facebook. Visual AI for shopping. User retargeting and banner ads increasingly a challenging business model? Facebook is developing technologies for visuals-inspired monetization. For the technically inclined: a deep dive into how Facebook has improved and expanded GrokNet, its product recognition system, which currently powers product tagging and showing of visually similar products on Facebook, but will expanded as visual search within Instagram to allow users to find similar products by just tapping on an image.

Shopify. Dropping commission. Following similar moves by Apple, Google, and more recently Amazon, Shopify drops its App Store commissions to 0% on developers’ first million in revenue.