Alexis Gerard. Picturing Napoleon. Hot off the press: Napoléon – L’Esprit des Lieux, a 221-page 25.5 x 32 cm coffee table book featuring 300 photos by my Visual 1st co-host Alexis and his co-author Annabelle Matter. This book is a first of its kind endeavor in visual communication: A photo-centric biography of a historic figure who lived before the photography era. (The book is in commemoration of next year’s 200-year passing of Napoleon, who died in 1821). Available in bookstores tomorrow, and online, including on Amazon.com, Amazon.fr, fnac, and Decitre. 

PicsArt. Going web. App-first photo editing developer PicsArt has ported two dozen of its most popular editing and AI-based tools to the web, in a move to further facilitate its users to create marketing and business-focused visual materials.

Adobe. Going Neural. At its Max conference, Adobe announces a slew of “Neural filters” (non-destructive filters powered by its Sensei AI engine) for Photoshop. They include Skin Smoothing for photo retouching and Smart Portrait for transforming a person's age, expression, hair, pose, and more. There's a Super Zoom filter for removing JPEG artifacts from small images, a tool for colorizing a black and white image in a click, and a Depth-Aware filter for simulating volumetric haze in the background to better highlight a subject.

Google Photos. Expanding print services. Cody Bratt, product manager and speaker at Visual 1st last week, announces Google Photos’ new subscription service: at $6.99 a month, including shipping and before tax, Google Photo users get 10 photo prints delivered to their door every month. The photos are suggested by the Google Photos AI engine, but you can make your own final selection. In addition, Google Photos users can now also order photo prints for same-day pickup at Walgreens.

EyeEm. Founder leaving. In 2013, at our very first Visual 1st (then still called Mobile Photo Connect), Florian Meissner demoed EyeEm in one of our Show & Tell sessions, while drawing everyone’s attention by saying that the impetus to founding his then still young mobile-only startup was that his DSLR had been stolen during a trip to NYC, leaving him to use his smartphone instead – and loving it! Alas, Florian is leaving EyeEm after 10 years at the helm, leaving an impressive community behind that helps over 25 million creators from over 150 countries to sell their images to leading brands worldwide.

Snapchat. Surprising Wall Street. Snap’s stock price went up 18% after hours yesterday after the company announced that its adjusted earnings, revenues and global daily active users were all higher than expected. Snap says is used the third quarter “as an opportunity to engage with brands that were looking ‘to align their marketing efforts with platforms who share their corporate values.’ ” 
“Ouch,” said the folks in Menlo Park.

Telegram. Fake nudes going freemium. Researchers have discovered a “deepfake ecosystem” on the messaging app Telegram centered around bots that generate fake nudes on request. Users interacting with these bots say the bots create nudes of women they know using images taken from social media, which they then share and trade with one another in various Telegram channels. The bots are free to use, but the fake nudes feature watermarks or only show partial nudity. Users can then pay a fee equal to just a few cents to “uncover” the pictures completely.