Congratulations to this year’s
Visual 1st Awards winners!
+ Visual 1st and DIY Video Summit announcements
[Scroll down for AND a few more things... imaging industry news highlights]
|
|
This year's Visual 1st Awards winners:
|
|
|
This is what our renowned jury said about this year's Visual 1st Awards winners:
|
|
|
|
In our minds the Best of Show Award should combine several elements, including significant business opportunities, impact on the market, innovative technology – all well packaged and presented. zerolens was a clear winner in all these areas. We were all impressed by the customer problems they’re attacking, the potential of the market, and the product they’ve developed – and all of that during the pandemic when
e-commerce is booming and innovative solutions are needed for retailers to continue to grow.
Andy Kelm, Managing Director Palmarés Advisors
|
|
|
|
At Visual 1st this year the trend most widely discussed was the potential of AI for imaging applications. To make the AI truly work is all about getting the details right, as the goal is to mass produce the effect of the AI, which is tough. We chose autoRetouch because they are focused on solving big problems for a growing industry, while their solution is packaged in a nice workflow and offers quite a few features we haven’t seen before.
Sami Niemi, Partner Spintop Ventures
|
|
|
|
Best Business Potential Award |
When considering the size of various markets, the online e-commerce market is by far the biggest at $25 trillion. When also considering that 20% of all retailers are online, the solutions that target this market certainly qualify for the Best Business Potential award.
With big platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce making it simple and economical for everyone to move sales online, we really like Bloom’s level of integration and automation in these platforms, the ease with which businesses can use Bloom, and their future potential resulting from network effects generated by the data they collect.
Today’s imaging assets capabilities of Bloom are just the beginning. Future directions such as using computer generated imaging to optimize e-commerce metrics is a very exciting avenue to explore.
Marcel van der Heijden, Partner Fortino Capital
|
|
|
|
Special Recognition Award |
As the world expands into more visual media the use of synthetic media is expanding quickly. vAIsual's methodology and approach to how they implement AI in the imaging space is very interesting. By generating their own datasets, they can acquire biometric releases and allow for self-identification, creating a unique and diverse dataset that can be leveraged to not just create synthetic media but to also generate algorithms to understand meaning & context of visual data.
Anna Dickson, Visual Lead, Google Image Search Google
|
|
Thanks again to all 39 presenters over the course of the last 3 days at Visual 1st and our DIY Video Summit. They all did a fabulous job – not easy to do these live demos with the eyes of a large crowd across the world watching you, and a ruthless timer counting down your 4-minute demo time.
Also thanks to our thoughtful and inspiring judges!
|
|
Recently launched and newly announced solutions at
Visual 1st and DIY Video Summit
|
|
Foreground. ShootProof launches Print Store. With Print Store, ShootProof photographers now have a one-click portal for their clients to design and order photo gifts – while offering photographers new revenue channels.
Cheerful.video. New video application by PicUP.Ai. Cheerful’s features include video background removal, video presentation integration with PowerPoint and soon to launch immersive live streaming.
EyeQ. Perfectly Clear AI. EyeQ’s new addition to their automatic image enhancement suite includes new AI Image Enhancement, AI Preset Selection, and AI Skin Tone Accuracy technologies.
Emortal. Digital memories preservation. Emortal launches a comprehensive solution to protect, preserve and pass on consumers’ digital legacy for future generations.
Capsule. Video creation tool Capsule launches 2.0. New features include responsive video (exporting to multiple aspect ratios), options to embedding Capsule videos, one-click video creation, and a redesigned dashboard.
Claid.AI. Photo enhancement for e-commerce. Photo enhancement vendor Let’s Enhance launches Claid.AI, which provides a range of photo optimization and enhancement technologies for e-commerce marketplaces.
Sensaria. Circle Graphics’ Online Wall Décor Division rebranded as Sensaria. Over the past three years, this division has acquired providers of owned and licensed art, photo-quality wall décor, and custom framing – World Art Group, Bay Photo, and Graphik Dimensions. The rebrand brings together the Graphik Dimensions, Graphik Printworks, Circle Graphics Décor, and CG on Demand brands under the Sensaria name.
More product announcements from Visual 1st and DIY Video Summit in upcoming issues.
|
|
Adobe. Joining the fray #1: web collaboration. One thread among our Visual 1st and DIY Video Summit presenters last week was the trend towards porting smartphone native apps to the web or bringing out new apps first and foremost as web apps. Well, Adobe is taking the first baby steps to join the fray, announcing web-based review and lite editing features for Photoshop and Illustrator files. In addition to the basic collaboration tools, Adobe offers some rudimentary web editing tools that would allow you to make "minor tweaks and quick edits" without having to launch the full Illustrator or Photoshop apps. Those include selection and minor color correction features.
Adobe. Joining the fray #2: NFT. Adobe is launching a system built into Photoshop that can, among other things, help prove that the person selling an NFT is the person who made it. It’s called Content Credentials, and NFT sellers will be able to link the Adobe ID with their crypto wallet, allowing compatible NFT marketplaces to show a sort of verified certificate proving the art’s source is authentic.
Facebook. It’s so your mom’s social network. I feel this whole newsletter could be filled with news that should make Facebook’s shareholders cringe, but two items stand out this week.
Two, revenues were up as usual – but less than forecasted due to Apple’s iPhone privacy changes (the same also applies to Snapchat’s revenues).
Pinterest. Hello TikTok-like video. Pinterest ads a new tab called Watch to its feed where people can scroll through short videos or a series of photos. The new tab looks similar to TikTok's feed, where you can quickly swipe up or down to watch videos. Pinterest users can save the content to their profile and "pin" it to a virtual board.
Google Pixel. Going 6.0. Although its market share is relatively small, I have a weak spot for the Google Pixel phone, ever since we had Google’s Alex Schiffhauer make an impressive presentation about the Pixel’s underlaying computational photography technology at Visual 1st 2019.
Well, we now have the Google Pixel 6, with some seriously improved camera hardware, including its 50-megapixel rear camera with its 1/1.31” size image sensor and f/1.85 equivalent aperture. What’s more, the Pixel 6 comes with a set of AI-powered software features to help make your photos look better: smart unblurs of moving faces, foreground-background segmentation, and skin tone exposure to display any skin tone as well as possible.
Best,
Hans Hartman
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
