Company – IMG.LY Blog

One SDK to Power Them All: Announcing IMG.LY SDK

Eray — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 10:25:44 GMT

From day one, IMG.LY has been driven by a singular mission: to empower creativity at scale. By embedding our technology directly into apps, websites, and workflows, we have helped hundreds of customers from social networks to e-commerce platforms to deliver rich, media-powered experiences to millions of users. We started out by offering two specialized SDKs, the Photo Editor SDK and the Video Editor SDK, later on, we introduced the Creative Editor SDK (CE.SDK) as a more flexible, all-in-one creative editing solution.

As CE.SDK has matured into a foundation for all creative workflows including photo and video editing, we’re taking the next step in our evolution. Later this year, we’ll unify our offerings under a single brand:

IMG.LY SDK.

For existing customers of PE.SDK and VE.SDK, rest assured, both products will continue to receive long-term support. We’ll explain what that means below.

From Fragmentation to Unification

Over the years, our Photo Editor SDK (PE.SDK) and Video Editor SDK (VE.SDK) have enabled customers to deliver creative editing for a specific domain (photo and video). While both excelled within their specific use cases, maintaining separate SDKs brought growing complexity from divergent feature sets across platforms to duplicated codebases and asynchronous upgrade paths. Not only did our customers’ use cases expand, driving demand for more custom editing solutions, this fragmentation ultimately limited our ability to move fast, innovate, and serve this growing demand.

That’s why we introduced Creative Editor SDK (CE.SDK): a unified foundation designed from the ground up to scale across creative domains and workflows. At its core is a single, shared engine capable of handling image, video, layout, text, and audio processing paired with native UI components for every major platform. With each release, CE.SDK has steadily absorbed functionality from both PE.SDK and VE.SDK, making it our most capable and extensible offering yet.

But as this convergence progressed, it also introduced a new kind of complexity: customers were often unsure which SDK to choose. By bringing everything into one consistent, cross-platform solution where every feature is developed in sync for web and mobile, CE.SDK eliminates that uncertainty and simplifies the path forward.

One SDK to Power Them All

Beyond the engine, the SDK now includes prebuilt solutions tailored to common use cases, for example photo, video, or AI-powered design tooling. These solutions help teams get started faster without compromising on customization or scalability.

As we move forward, the IMG.LY SDK will be the sole focus of our platform investments. That means:

Regular updates and new features delivered consistently across all supported platforms.
Turnkey solutions will provide an even simpler integration path, requiring only a few lines of code for set up.
Plugin support and a modular architecture for maximum extensibility.
Automation and Headless Mode for powerful backend or non-UI-driven workflows.
A unified API surface: one learning curve, one integration, fewer surprises.
And for new prospects and existing partners alike, a clear and confident message: IMG.LY SDK is the future.

Long-Term Support for PE. and VE.SDK

As part of this transition, PE.SDK and VE.SDK are now in long-term support mode (LTS). This means:

They remain actively supported by a dedicated team.
They are no longer sold to new customers.
We encourage current users to begin exploring CE.SDK — soon branded as IMG.LY SDK — as the future-ready path forward.

If you’re currently using PE.SDK or VE.SDK, rest assured: we’ve got you covered. But for faster innovation and access to our latest AI-powered features, we strongly recommend evaluating IMG.LY SDK.

What’s Next?

Of course, the journey doesn’t stop here. The unification of our SDKs paves the road for many more exciting capabilities, such as:

Improve Developer Experience
Simpler setup, smarter defaults, and faster time-to-interaction, so teams can go from idea to integration in record time.
Build for Agentic AI
Designed for agent-driven workflows: responsive canvases, multimodal orchestration, and APIs tailored for autonomous actions.
Better Serve Designers & Teams
Our upcoming Studio offering will include project dashboards, version control, and multi-user permissions for collaborative work.
Personalization at Scale
While we already support for variables and templating, we are exploring how to leverage AI to effortlessly create smart variation.
Customizable UI & Fast Workflow Building
We’re making it easier than ever to adapt the editor to your needs whether you’re modifying the UI, embedding your own logic, or orchestrating custom creative workflows.

Now is the perfect time to connect with our team, share your roadmap, test-drive upcoming modules, and plan your migration. Your feedback will help shape the future of IMG.LY SDK.

IMG.LY x AI

Eray — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 13:18:14 GMT

Over the past two years, one question has consistently emerged in conversations with customers: “What about AI?”
While AI promises to disrupt many industries, it remains difficult to grasp how this technology will reshape creative workflows.

Our customers look to us for guidance: What is IMG.LY’s vision? How will our SDK help them harness this wave of innovation?
Last month, we took our first significant step by launching an initial suite of generative AI-powered features for our web SDK. We’ve embedded these tools deeply into photo, video, and design editing workflows and the response from customers and prospects was overwhelmingly positive.

And this is just the beginning. An immense opportunity lies ahead for both IMG.LY and our customers to drive transformation in the creative domain through our SDK. In this post, I want to share our vision for the future of creative tools powered by AI and our SDK.

Going forward, we’re focusing on three central goals:

1. Deep Integration of AI Capabilities into Editing Workflows

The pace of AI innovation continues to be remarkably fast. New models and configurations emerge almost daily, some as APIs, others open-sourced on platforms like Hugging Face. While some offer generalist features, others provide specialized, industry-specific capabilities, such as automatically obscuring license plates, blurring faces or replacing skies for property exteriors.

The true value of these AI tools emerges not in isolation, but when they’re seamlessly combined within existing workflows.

That’s why we built a plugin system for CE.SDK.
The CE.SDK plugin system has fundamentally changed how quickly we, and our customers, can integrate new capabilities. We’ve created a way to bring AI models and agents directly into connected workflows within the editor, making AI feel native rather than bolted on.

A recent example is our integration of OpenAI’s gpt-image-1 API, which we implemented in just a few days after its release. We used it to build a visual prompting workflow that takes into account all elements of a page, text, images, and annotations, to generate results based on the complete layout context.

These early successes are encouraging us to ship even faster and bring new features to our customers.

We’re now partnering with fal.ai to provide a nearly out-of-the-box experience to use any new generative AI model through their platform (more on this soon). Fal.ai excels at speed—when exciting new models emerge, they offer API access within days. This partnership ensures our users can quickly access new AI capabilities with minimal effort. More partnerships and integrations are on the horizon, bringing world-class AI APIs with intuitive interfaces directly into the editor.

2. Enabling AI Agents as Creative Collaborators

AI agents, like humans, leverage tools to accomplish tasks efficiently. CE.SDK occupies a unique position as a highly adaptable, multi-platform technology for editing various media types—including a fully documented headless version that’s perfect for programmatic control.

Thanks to CE.SDK’s fully documented API and headless architecture, AI agents can be created to navigate and operate the editor programmatically. This opens the door to agents that act as powerful scaffolders:

Generating initial designs and layouts based on brief descriptions
Automatically aligning content with brand guidelines
Transforming static designs into dynamic videos with a single command
Creating engaging short video content from prompts
Adapting existing designs to new formats and dimensions

Crucially, everything an AI agent creates remains fully editable by human users. You can refine, add nuance, and perfect the results through collaboration. AI provides the scaffolding, humans remain the tastemakers, adding the creative spark that makes designs truly exceptional.

3. AI-Powered SDK Configuration and Customization

AI agents are already actively involved in building, refining, and optimizing software tools—a trend that’s accelerating rapidly. This shift directly impacts developer experience and points to an exciting future where our SDK serves not just human developers, but AI agents as well.

To facilitate this interaction, we’ve already taken steps like making our documentation available in LLM-friendly formats. But this is just the beginning of our journey toward radically improving the experience for both developers and AI agents.

Our ultimate goal is conversational configuration. Imagine describing your requirements in plain language, and having an AI agent handle the rest:

Configuring the SDK’s visual aesthetics to match your brand
Setting up custom functionality and workflows
Integrating media libraries and plugins
Optimizing performance for specific use cases

This isn’t just about making development faster. It’s about democratizing access to powerful creative tools, allowing anyone to build sophisticated editing experiences—regardless of technical expertise.

Looking Forward

We believe that AI collaboration represents a transformative shift in creative technology, empowering users and developers to achieve extraordinary outcomes. At IMG.LY, we’re committed to being at the forefront of this exciting journey. Our vision extends beyond simply adding AI features, we’re reimagining how creative tools are built, configured, and used in an AI-augmented world.

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CreativeEditor SDK now Supports Flutter on iOS & Android

Leon — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 09:16:19 GMT

We’re excited to introduce our new official imgly_editor Flutter plugin, bringing the CreativeEditor SDK to the Flutter ecosystem for iOS and Android!

Our CreativeEditor SDK empowers developers to seamlessly integrate design, video, and photo editing capabilities into their applications. Over the past few months, we’ve been laser-focused on enhancing our mobile editor solutions—refining existing features and expanding to new use cases, like the Video Editor.

To make our CreativeEditor SDK accessible to even more developers, we’re expanding our platform lineup to include mobile cross-platform frameworks.

We’re kicking off with one of the leading cross-platform mobile development frameworks, bringing you a Flutter integration for both iOS and Android.

Checkout our Flutter Showcases app on GitHub and test the integration yourself or follow our guide to learn how to integrate IMG.LY’s video editor for Flutter into your app.

Getting Started

Using the CreativeEditor SDK in Flutter is as easy as pie. First, gather your essentials: your license from our dashboard and the asset you wish to edit (if applicable).

Then, call the IMGLYEditor.openEditor function and start creating:

import "package:imgly_editor/imgly_editor.dart";

final settings = EditorSettings(license: "YOUR_LICENSE");
final result = await IMGLYEditor.openEditor(settings: settings);

Editor UI Presets

The imgly_editor Flutter plugin is built on top of our native editor solutions, enabling you to use our existing iOS and Android editor UI variants supporting a broad range of use cases. At launch, you can choose between:

Simply specify the editor variant when opening the editor:

import 'package:imgly_editor/imgly_editor';

/// Open the editor from an existing editor configuration.
///
/// Choose between [EditorPreset.video], [EditorPreset.image],
/// [EditorPreset.design], [EditorPreset.postcard] and
/// [EditorPreset.apparel].
const preset = EditorPreset.video;
final settings = EditorSettings(license: "YOUR_LICENSE");
final result = await IMGLYEditor.openEditor(preset: preset, settings: settings);

Additionally to our existing editor variants, you can also create your own editor variant to suit your particular use case using our native api. Please refer to our documentation on further information.

The Only Truly Cross Platform SDK

Since you are using Flutter, you probably care about time to market, reduced learning overhead for your dev team and cross platform feature parity and consistency. IMG.LY’s SDK design is guided by those same objectives. It is built atop a single creative engine that is portable to any platform. Whether iOS, Android, Desktop, or the Web, every platform uses the same underlying tech.

That means:

iOS and Android make use of the same underlying API.
Cross platform feature parity is baked into the cake. Since core functionality is implemented at the engine level, features are guaranteed to be available on both platform, although the timeline might differ somewhat.
Designs are 100% interoperable and consistent between platforms. Exporting and importing design files across platforms works seamlessly and final renderings are guaranteed to be consistent.

Fully Customizable UI

The Flutter plugin provides choices for theming, styling color palettes, and callbacks to hook into editor events.

We have designed the Flutter plugin to be adaptable to match your brand and use case specific requirements. Soon the plugin will also support more advanced customization options such as the ability to activate or deactivate features by default.

Check out our documentation for more information on opening a specific editor variant and customize the editor to your needs.

What’s Next?

To showcase what the new plugin can do, we’ve prepared a public example application you can explore on GitHub. Additionally, our documentation offers all the details you need to get started. And of course, you can head to our imgly_editor pub.dev page to begin integrating the Creative Editor into your app. Remember to grab your license from our homepage and let our editor unlock the creative potential of your users.

Are you Looking for React Native?

For those awaiting a React Native release, we have great news: React Native support (iOS & Android) is up next!

Stay tuned for more updates, and please reach out if you have any questions. Thank you for reading.

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Plugin Release Part 1: Customizing the UI & Quick Actions

Jan — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 07:16:36 GMT

At IMG.LY we are driven by a commitment to empower creativity for end users worldwide, we do so by giving our customers the tools to build the ideal creative experience for their customers. For this reason, we are shaping our CreativeEditor SDK to be built for modification and extension. IMG.LY’s customers are not limited by our roadmap. To the contrary, plugins allow customers to not only extend editor functionality, but to also benefit from third-party plugins and open source development based on IMG.LY’s CE.SDK. This new plugin system is designed to give our customers unparalleled autonomy, allowing them to tailor the user experience to their specific needs and accelerate product innovation.

This first release of CE.SDK’s plugin API enables you to customize the UI at certain extension points and locations, as well as change the order and location of UI elements. At these points you will not only be able to change the appearance of existing features but add entirely custom features in the form of quick actions - simple one-click actions to edit canvas elements like removing an image background or vectorizing a graphic.

Extension Points in the UI

Before customizing the UI, it is crucial to understand the user experience we have designed to facilitate intuitive manipulation and creation of a range of designs. The following key locations in the editor UI are extension points for your plugins. We provide a visual example for the type of customization possible at each location:

Canvas: The core interaction area for design content, controlled by the Creative Engine.

Dock: The primary entry point for user interactions not directly related to the selected block. It is primarily, though not exclusively, used to open panels with asset libraries or add elements to the canvas. This release allows you to customize the buttons in the dock. The customization of panels will be possible following the next release.

Canvas Menu: Provides block-specific settings and actions such as deletion or duplication. Here, we customized the menu by adding a background removal action and actions for layer management.

Inspector Bar: Main location for block-specific functionality. Any action or setting available for the currently selected block that does not appear in the canvas menu will be shown here.

Navigation Bar: For actions affecting browser navigation and global scene effects such as zoom or undo/redo. The customization below shows more advanced navigation patterns for multi-steps designs that can be implemented via plugins.

Canvas Bar: For actions affecting the canvas or scene as a whole, such as adding pages. This is an alternative place for actions such as zoom or redo/undo.

Customizing UI Components

You can control the order and layout of components within these locations using Order APIs, which allow you to add, remove, or reorder components. We also provide special layout components like separators and spacers to help organize your custom components effectively.

Registering New Components

Beyond predefined components, you can register your own custom components using builder elements such as buttons, dropdowns, and inputs. This enables you to integrate unique behaviors and logic into the web editor seamlessly. This is how you would implement custom “quick actions” such as background removal

Feature-level Control

In addition to defining custom components, you can use the new feature API to control components on the feature level based on the current context. For instance, you might want to hide the duplicate and delete button for a new “Avatar” block type, you can use the Feature API to selectively disable these components for that specific block.

Examples: Background Removal and Cut-out lines

A straightforward example of a plugin that extends the default editor UI with a quick action that acts on an element is our image background removal plugin.

Here, we customized the canvas menu of image elements to prominently display a “BG Removal” button acting on the currently selected block. To not place so much emphasis on background removal, this feature could have been placed in the inspector bar instead.

The next example is an outlook on what is to come.

Sometimes a plugin manipulates an element but requires additional inputs from the users so that a single button click does not suffice. Such is the case for our cut-out lines plugin, allowing users to create custom cut-out or perforated line shapes on the canvas. The button is placed in the dock and a panel opens on click where the user can select shapes for the cut-out or opt for a dynamic shape that is generated from the selection.

Get Started

Start developing your own plugins by visiting our plugin documentation. We’re excited to see what you’ll build!

What’s Next

The next plugin release will allow you to customize the UI with panels, enabling the extension of increasingly complex behaviors that require additional user input or interaction with external services.

Stay tuned for more updates, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or need assistance. Together, we are redefining the future of creative editing.

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Unleash Creativity with CE.SDK’s New Plugin System

Daniel — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 08:42:25 GMT

At IMG.LY, we have always believed that a superb design editor should be effortlessly customizable and extensible. We are thrilled to roll out a brand-new Plugin system for CE.SDK in the upcoming months—to take creative editing and feature development to the next level.

Starting with one-click features like background removal or vectorizers, smart design tools like QR codes or subtitle generators, and deeply interactive features like generative AI for text and images; all these tools can be used or built by customers soon.

Additionally, our upcoming Plugin system will bring you unparalleled autonomy by making feature development for our SDK accessible and offering extensive options to reconfigure our editor’s UI.

Start exploring our Plugin System rollout now to immediately benefit from upcoming features.

Built for Modification

Let’s dive deep into some of the opportunities CE.SDK plugins help unlock.

Unlocking the AI Revolution

While the AI transformation is already fully underway, much of the tech is still not very accessible to product builders, often requiring deep technical knowledge to get started. At the same time, AI features become significantly more valuable when integrated with other editing functionalities in workflows or automation. With our plugins, we aim to make it effortless to leverage innovation and put it to use.

Boosting Customer Autonomy

Key to our success is providing maximum flexibility and autonomy to our customers about product decisions. Ultimately, you shouldn’t depend on our product roadmap; rather, you should be able to add features when you like. While our SDKs are already highly configurable, plugins allow tailoring the whole user experience not only on a look & feel level but through custom functionalities and editing experiences.

Accelerate Product Expansion

Many ecosystems witnessed explosive growth in added value to the user after releasing plugin mechanisms. Currently, only IMG.LY core developers can contribute to the SDK. We have started to extend this to solution engineers and even designers on our team who don’t have much knowledge of the inner workings of the SDK. Ultimately, we will push this more and more into a community of contributors, making the community’s innovation accessible to everyone.

Key Concepts

Three important concepts have driven the development of our Plugins:

Customizable Menu Bars
We are extending our API so that it allows easy hooking into various parts of the UI. Our editor has key components like the inspector, toolbar, and on-canvas menu. These are now all accessible through an API, so you can hook your feature anywhere in the editor.

UI Building Blocks to Provide Consistency
To reach a high level of consistency and speed up time for development, we will be providing out-of-the-box UI components such as buttons, sliders, text inputs, etc.

Escape Hatches
From experience, we know that sometimes unique functionality needs unique solutions, so we have added escape hatches to add custom elements via HTML whenever needed.

What Can You Build with our Plugin System?

Let’s explore some potential use cases of the plugin system.

Custom Actions

Adding custom actions is a great option to make simple third-party APIs accessible within the editor. This can be one-click edits such as background removal, vectorizers, or auto-enhancement for images. You can also add custom actions for text in combination with Large Language Models (LLM) to provide features like autocorrection and improved writing, etc.

Custom Tools

Some custom functionality will require more than just a single button, e.g., to generate AI images, background patterns, QR codes, or maps. In these cases, you’ll require sliders, text input, drop-downs, and many other UI elements. With plugins, you can easily create panels with your own UI to bring any custom tool to life.

Custom Assets & Presets

Apart from building custom tools, you can also bundle and group effects into presets and make them accessible in a custom panel. This is especially useful to simplify the design process or create standard design components: for example, providing beautiful text presets will enable your users to create instantly great text designs without any design knowledge.

Custom Libraries

Integrate third-party libraries, such as Unsplash, Getty Images, Pexels, or your own.

Custom Editor Behavior

Some of our customers asked us how they could move a functionality from one place in the editor to another. Let’s say you wish to move the function ‘move to front’ from the inspector to the canvas menu. This is not a problem! You can do this by using the internal API endpoints of our editor.

As for custom editor behavior, you can do far more than just move functionality. Here is a demo of layer lists we built as a plugin.

Custom User Feedback

Additionally, you can enhance the canvas with overlays, which are useful for providing alerts, instructions, or feedback directly on the canvas.

What’s Next

We are now rolling out Plugins and building an initial set of features through Plugins ourselves—available for the web first, and mobile SDKs will follow. Keep your eyes peeled for our next releases and don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to learn more about plugins, and how your product benefits from integration without losing time and resources.

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From Online Oasis to Coastal Celebration: Our Retreat in Montenegro

Neslihan — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:27:06 GMT

As a remote software company, IMG.LY thrives in an online oasis. Remote work brought flexibility for team members individually, working when and where you work best. For the company, it brought the best people across the world. Yet, it also left us craving more: stronger connections, open communication, and a sense of belonging.

The Online Oasis: Thriving or Drying Up?

The Remote Work Reality
Our team members are distributed across the globe, connected through screens and virtual meetings. This setup has enabled us to collaborate effectively and achieve remarkable outcomes, invite the best team members around the world without uprooting them from their communities, to move them to the company home. We’ve forged strong connections online and have crafted solutions together, that we are proud of.

However, even in our thriving digital setup, we believe there’s always room for improvement. We value connection, open communication, and a sense of belonging, so we’ve embarked on a journey to enhance these aspects. Our goal is not to see remote work as a second-best solution, but to make it even better by combining the strengths of our online collaboration with real-world experiences.

An Investment in Growth
For companies, a retreat isn’t just a getaway; it’s also an investment. It’s an opportunity to recharge creative energies, develop personal and professional development, and thus increase productivity. For us, this retreat serves as the cornerstone of a year-long framework, one built around a growth mindset that will guide us to our company goals, both individually and as a team.

The Journey to a Goal

Our destination: Montenegro, a coastal calm where the Adriatic Sea meets the stunning landscapes of Herceg Novi. In Montenegro, we didn’t aim at finding faults with remote work; it was about elevating the life at IMG.LY even more.

Mapping the Objectives
As we prepared for our retreat, we recognized the importance of setting objectives. These would serve as our guiding stars. Some spots in need of rehydration were: enhancing open communication, tackle zoom fatigue and propel engagement, promote skill sharing, and lastly, improving leadership skills.

Work & Play: Is a Fixed Schedule Relaxing?

With our objectives set, we outlined a clear balanced schedule, with check-ins in the morning, and a check-out in the evening, to give feedback on how things are going, readjust and be heard. The in-between period was shaped by workshops, free time in the cities and at the beach, and exciting group activities along the coast. This schedule ensures that no one feels lost and allows for easy connection with others, time for recuperation, or focused work.

Our retreat featured over 20 workshops by team members, each designed to address specific objectives. From improving communication skills to deepening our product knowledge, these workshops provided valuable insights and hands-on learning experiences.

To sharpen the saw, nurture the soft skills: This included workshops on tackling public speaking fears, to communication techniques for better feedback loops.

To forge the future, sharpen your vision: Our team offered talks on our product vision, understanding our engine, generative AI, learning tools, and much more. Of course, we couldn’t help but organize a public viewing of the Apple Keynote event, including a self-made bingo app, where we could make our guesses on which features will make it into their new products.

Of course, we also explored the city, including a fantastic boat trip, and visit the filming sets of Game of Thrones in Dubrovnik. One of my personal highlights was particularly learning improvisation games from our teammate Thierry at the beach. The clear schedule made it much easier to connect with everyone, without feeling lost.

End of One Journey, Beginning of Another

The retreat was not about escaping the digital world but embracing it fully, understanding its strengths, and enhancing them through real-world experiences. Our digital oasis had not withered away; it flourishes into something extraordinary. We know that for companies, a retreat is an investment, and we believe it’s worth it, especially when sailing out with clear objectives.

IMG.LY Announces Open Source JavaScript Library for In-Browser Background Removal

Jan — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 11:38:49 GMT

UPDATE October 2023: We’ve recently introduced Node.js support for the @imgly/background-removal npm package. This enhancement enables you to remove backgrounds from images not only in the user’s browser but also on your server. This opens up the potential for batch processing and allows you to bypass memory constraints, especially for larger images.

Just before the summer lull engulfs us all, we have something exciting to share! We are thrilled to announce the release of @imgly/background-removal, an innovative npm package that empowers developers to seamlessly remove backgrounds from images directly in the browser.

Gone are the days of relying on server-side processing or sacrificing data privacy. With IMG.LY’s Background Removal, you can now harness the power of in-browser background removal with ease. Let’s dive into the key features that make this library truly exceptional:

In-Browser Background Removal

Our one-of-a-kind solution performs the entire background removal process directly in the user’s browser, eliminating the need for additional server costs. By leveraging the computing power of the local device, users can enjoy a fast and efficient background removal process that streamlines their workflow.

Data Protection

Rest assured that your images and sensitive information remain secure within your own devices. As IMG.LY’s Background Removal runs entirely in the browser, there are no data transfers to external servers, ensuring robust data privacy and alleviating any concerns you may have.

You can experience it in action on our background removal showcase.

Seamless Integration with IMG.LY’s CE.SDK

IMG.LY’s Background Removal seamlessly integrates with IMG.LY’s CE.SDK, making it easier than ever to incorporate powerful in-browser image matting and background removal capabilities into your projects. Boost your creative endeavors with this intuitive integration.

The Neural Network (ONNX model) and WebAssembly (WASM) files used by IMG.LY’s Background Removal are hosted on UNPKG, making them readily available for download to all users of the library. However, if you prefer to host the data on your own servers, our library also supports custom asset serving. The choice is yours!

Background removal is often the first step in any creative workflow involving image composition. Whether you are developing e-commerce applications that need real-time background removal, enhancing user experience in image editing applications, or simplifying the creative process with web-based graphic design tools, IMG.LY’s Background Removal is your go-to solution.

Empower Yourself with IMG.LY’s Background Removal

Whether you are a professional developer or a hobbyist, this open source JavaScript library empowers you to deliver impressive applications and services with ease. Join the growing community of developers who are revolutionizing the way background removal is done.

Get started with @imgly/background-removal today by visiting our official npm package page and our GitHub repository. You’ll find comprehensive documentation, examples, and everything you need to unlock the full potential of in-browser background removal.

Update: Node.js Support

We have just shipped Node.js support for the @imgly/background-removal npm package. In addition to the users’ browser, you can now remove backgrounds from images on your server, making it possible to perform batch processing or bypass memory constraints for larger images.

Thank you for your support, and we can’t wait to see the incredible projects you’ll create with IMG.LY’s Background Removal. Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements as we continue to improve and expand this powerful library. Happy coding!

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IMG.LY Partners with Soundstripe to Infuse Video Editing with Epic Royalty-Free Music & SFX

Jan — Wed, 24 May 2023 07:31:24 GMT

We are excited to announce our exciting new partnership with Soundstripe, the leading provider of royalty-free music for video creators. Our VideoEditor SDK now features a seamless integration with Soundstripe, offering users access to a vast collection of over 9,000 hand-curated songs from 150+ musicians, along with an extensive library of 70,000 sound effects.

Starting from version 11, our VideoEditor SDK now comes pre-equipped with a seamless Soundstripe integration, as detailed in our documentation.

Streamlining Music Licensing for Digital Platforms

Finding the right music for digital platforms hasn’t been easy. Music licensing complexities and the challenge of finding high-quality tracks that align with your brand standards can be overwhelming.

But now, with our partnership with Soundstripe, you can effortlessly enhance your app with royalty-free music and video editing.

Our mission has always been to provide the ultimate toolkit for building captivating creative experiences, and video editing plays a central role in achieving this. We recognize the significant role that music plays in video storytelling, as it has the power to evoke emotions, set the mood, tone, and atmosphere, and greatly influence the pacing and energy of a video. With Soundstripe’s diverse range of over 50 genres, your users will have no trouble finding the perfect track to complement their visual narrative.

Effortless Music Selection

We have developed an intuitive search interface that allows users to explore music by title, genre, and description effortlessly. Once users have found their desired song, they can easily position any section of the track over their video. Furthermore, we are delighted to provide every one of our customers with seven complimentary sample songs, allowing them to get a taste of the fantastic library available. To unlock the full audio library, simply head over to Soundstripe and request an API key.

We are eagerly looking forward to working closely with Soundstripe to deliver the most exceptional video editing experience on the market. We invite you to try out VideoEditor SDK in your Android or iOS app and witness the transformative impact it will have on your users’ creativity. Together, we can take your video editing capabilities to new heights.

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Interview: Talking Personalization With Richard Askam

Jan — Tue, 23 May 2023 12:39:46 GMT

When it comes to personalization in print, one name stands out: Richard Askam. With an impressive 17 years of expertise in this dynamic field and a keen awareness of emerging trends, Richard has emerged as a true pioneer in personalization within the print industry.

As the visionary behind the iconic “Share a Coke” campaign and the esteemed host of the FESPA podcast, Richard brings a wealth of invaluable insights. He sheds light on the transformative power that personalization holds in captivating audiences, forging meaningful connections, and delivering unparalleled marketing experiences. Moreover, Richard shares his perspectives on how the print industry can effectively tap into this remarkable potential.

Richard, what is personalization to you, and where do you see the value of personalization?

Personalization to me should be renamed. If we can go back and put the genie back in the bottle, then release it again but call it individualization instead. That is what it means to me, adding value and emotion to the individual. That moment when you stand in front of a loved one or colleague who you have created an individualized gift for and watch their face as they open it—is priceless. This is not limited to gifting but can be used by brands to “personalize” the relationship to a deeper level with their clients by individualizing their approach. Perhaps it is time we re-branded personalization…?

You are one of the trailblazers in the personalization space, leading with the renowned “Share a Coke” campaign. The campaign was a huge success, but it began over ten years ago, and it doesn’t seem like we have seen an increase in personalized campaigns, why do you think that is?

When I first started in personalization—just over 17 years ago—it felt as though we were at the start of something. Seven years later in 2013, when Coca-Cola brought me in to work on the online Share a Coke campaign in Europe, it seemed as though personalization was beginning to take off. But now, it appears that personalization has become stuck as the idea of putting a name on something, while the wealth of opportunity to use personalization to engender loyalty and build long-term customer relationships remains largely untapped.

There’s a big difference between something that is personalized and something that is personal. Putting someone’s name on something is a great conversation starter—that was the whole point of the Share a Coke campaign—but before you do that, you need to think about what comes next. There is no point in starting a conversation and then walking away!

Personalization needs to deliver value. I don’t mean return on marketing investment; I mean value for the customer. It should enhance their lives and make them feel recognized and understood because it is this that will engender loyalty and deepen the customer relationship. When it comes to customer loyalty programs, this includes personalizing the reward—or possibly allowing the customer to choose it themselves—according to the customer’s preferences, interests, and buying behavior.

Personalized rewards can deploy the ‘surprise and delight’ marketers seek to make an emotional connection with customers. When you consider that emotionally connected customers have a higher lifetime value, stay with a brand for longer, and advocate for brands more, this alone seems a compelling reason to personalize rewards. And with research showing that consumers want to receive relevant recommendations and are more likely to make repeat purchases from companies that personalize, it is clear that consumers are looking for personalized communications too.

Perhaps this is why it has become a little stuck as in the mind of the brand, they are concerned about people’s privacy but at the same time searching for a way of unlocking the relationship. Catch 22… If there is no strategy driving your personalization efforts, then you’re just using personalization to be clever. However, while that may be great for brand awareness, it is unlikely to build loyalty. Indeed, this may be one of the factors in some marketers reconsidering their spending on personalization—in 2019, Gartner suggested that by 2025, 80% of marketers who have invested in personalization may abandon their efforts due to a lack of ROI, the challenges of managing data, or some combination of both.

Which market trends are driving the need for personalization?

I don’t see this as a market trend, more of a behavior. What was once the luxury of adding personalization to products has become the standard, the normal. So in many ways now it is the consumer driving the need and requirement for more personalized options. As with all societal changes, those that adapt to consumer demand and adopt the behavior that encourages it will triumph while those that wait for the demand to return to something they are more comfortable with –their legacy– will wither on the vine.

Why do you think printers struggle to market their personalization services to brands and agencies?

I think fundamentally printers have sprinted towards technical upgrades and capability but not slowed down to explain what that offers to brands and agencies. They have been left behind and as a consequence, are largely unaware of many of the clever ways that print can be used to further their own ambitions and build a relationship with new consumers in an increasingly noisy world, a world that is getting almost impossible to stand out in. Printers need to behave like an agency, not just a tech business, and bring brands along for the ride.

What are some technological challenges to achieve large-scale adoption of personalization in print?

There are none. Simple. As I said in the previous question, the print industry has grabbed hold of tech and run with it, and their capability to deliver large-scale adoption of personalization in print has been in place for nearly 10 years—but it feels like the best-kept secret and as such, is why personalization is still stuck as largely a labeling option.

There are many points in the customer relationship where personalization can occur, starting with the marketing message, the packaging to the product itself. At which point do you think its use is most effective?

I would say “think like a consumer.” At what point do you appreciate a personal approach, at what point does someone do something over and above the norm really grab your attention and make you lean in? This is different for every one of us, and there is no standard approach, which might explain why brands still take a standard approach to hit the average. But it’s time to think about what the individual wants and deliver on that.

We are becoming more and more numb to personalized messaging in the digital sphere, recent advances in AI will only serve to accelerate this trend. Do you think this will present print with an opportunity to stand out or does it raise the bar for personalization across the board?

As I said earlier, what was once considered luxury is now considered standard and as such, noticed less. Perhaps one of the reasons we have not seen the same quantum shift that the Share a Coke campaign delivered 10 years ago is because brands don’t want to be seen to be copying others, or they have tried something basic and consumers haven’t noticed or reacted to it. Coke moved the dial… given the wide availability of technical knowledge and print capability, it’s time the dial got moved again!

Thank you for the insightful interview, Richard. Your invaluable knowledge will undoubtedly inspire and empower others in their pursuit of personalized marketing experiences.

Looking for a solution to scale your personalization efforts? Check how IMG.LY can help with bringing personalization into your application. Stay ahead of the curve with our newsletter and sign up now!

IMG.LY Partners with Getty Images to Revolutionize Image Integration

Klaudia — Wed, 03 May 2023 13:07:31 GMT

We are thrilled to announce our latest partnership with Getty Images, the world’s leading provider of images, clips, and illustrations for visual communication. This collaboration has brought forth the Getty Images Library SDK - a bridge that seamlessly integrates image searching, licensing, and editing into your application. This revolutionary toolkit grants access to millions of stock images and enables your teams and users to browse, license, and edit images without ever leaving your application or website.

By integrating Getty Images Library SDK into your application, you can save precious resources, streamline your workflows, and ensure legal compliance with a broad range of licensed stock images at your fingertips. Imagine not having to switch between different platforms to search, license, and edit images – all while staying in your application.

Empower your Developers and Users

At IMG.LY, we are passionate about delivering powerful editing tools with an intuitive interface, providing a creative outlet for users of all skill levels. Teaming up with Getty Images, we strive to provide a toolkit that empowers content creators to communicate their message in the most efficient and effective way possible, while upholding Getty Images’ commitment to quality and diversity in visual images.

Designed by developers, for developers, the integration is quick and easy to set up. Once integrated, users can effortlessly browse through images, license the visuals they want, and make quick edits such as cropping or rotating images, all within the same application.

We are excited to share this news and look forward to working with Getty Images to bring tools and empower creative expression!

Get Started

Learn more about the Getty Images Library SDK, how to integrate it, or contact Getty Images to obtain a license key.

Taking CreativeEditor SDK Cross-Platform

Jan — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 14:25:48 GMT

https://www.youtube.com/embed/CGYR-8vQruA?feature=oembed

We are thrilled to announce our biggest CreativeEditor SDK update to date. CE.SDK is now fully cross-platform, allowing you to build any creative workflow on the web, iOS, or Android. This update is the culmination of the past five years since we started development on the CE.SDK engine. Our mission, then as now, is to empower developers to build the best possible editing experience on any platform.

We believe that cross-platform support is essential in today’s competitive landscape, regardless of the industry. Users expect seamless experiences across different devices and platforms. Moreover, many design and editing use cases, such as annotation and video editing, are better served on mobile than on the web.

This CE.SDK cross-platform release removes any technical limitations, making the move to mobile effortless.

Build Your Own UI Anywhere

CreativeEditor SDK exposes a headless API allowing developers to build entirely custom UI using their favorite UI framework on the web, iOS and Android.
You can now build the perfect creative editing experience for your use case and seamlessly integrate it into any application whether a web-to-print tool, digital asset management solution or social media app.

Starter Kit UIs

On mobile, we ship starter kit UIs for designing apparel and postcards. In the future, we are going to expand these for all common editing use cases giving you the perfect starting point for building out your own use case whether that is simple photo editing or complex video-based design editing.

You can explore these starter kits by downloading our showcase apps from the App Store and Google Play Store, respectively.

Your users can now easily share templates across platforms and render the finished design in any environment. Users can start their design on mobile, finish it on the desktop and you can re-render it to different formats and resolutions on your servers while staying 100% consistent. Users are no longer limited to one platform and can edit designs whenever they feel a spark of creativity, without compromising quality and resolution.

A Universal Rendering Engine

We did not simply rebuild the same tech for every platform, instead we invested in a foundational technology enabling us to swiftly develop editors for any platform.

The CE.SDK engine is the powerhouse making all of this possible, it’s a universal graphics processing engine that is able to target all platforms. So all apps on any platform rely on the same foundational technology ensuring consistency and performance.

We are excited to see what you will create with this new update, get in touch and our solutions team will explore how to best realize your use case.

To find out what you can do with our CreativeEditor SDK, visit the showcases or start your free trial today.

IMG.LY's Founders Discuss Personalization on the FESPA Podcast

Jan — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 11:41:40 GMT

The Personalization Experience is a new initiative by the global print expo FESPA that brings together over 3,000 stakeholders from every part of the print value chain, from brands and agencies to retailers, printers, and their suppliers. Its goal is to connect them with OEMs and software providers to explore the potential of personalization in sportswear, packaging, products, loyalty, and custom interiors.

The Personalization Experience Podcast features a series of interviews with key stakeholders to set the tone for the conference. In one such interview, Richard Askam spoke with our founders to discuss how IMG.LY’s solution fits into this puzzle.

Key Takeaways

Where does IMG.LY sit in the world of personalization?

IMG.LY started out by bringing photo and video editing to software on the web and on mobile as a classic SDK. This experience gave us some perspective on the overarching creative needs in digital and physical industries.

We set our eyes on this grander scheme and build a universal creative tool enabling workflows and automation in a fraction of the time and money you’d spent implementing creative capabilities yourself.

Personalization is at the core of IMG.LY’s CreativeEditor SDK, and it is being used to add personalization capabilities to print products as well as marketing and e-commerce applications.

What are the unique capabilities of IMG.LY’s SDK for personalization?

Any editing experience starts either from a blank canvas or a predefined design a user can adopt. The crucial insight is that every product needs a slightly different editing experience, both from the editor and templating point of view. Most design tools are far too complex for the average user to employ effectively, so we spent a lot of time figuring out the best starting point for every use case. Users can then tweak and adapt to add the core personalization element without worrying about designing non-essential elements from scratch.

Furthermore, personalization does not always have to require individual input, it can happen in an automated fashion as well. That is why CreativeEditor SDK also supports powerful automation features that enable variable data printing and mass customization using personal data.

What is the state of personalization in the print industry?

During his 15+ years in the personalization business, Richard has encountered a common objection: it’s just not cost-effective to print a single item. However, his go-to rejoinder is that you are printing a million ones. While the technical feasibility of personalization is present, the print industry has traditionally been hesitant to promote personalization to customers. Fortunately, this is changing with unit economics that are reducing the cost of small-batch printing, coupled with readily available personalization software such as IMG.LY’s CreativeEditor SDK.

While technology infrastructure can be a significant cost, CreativeEditor SDK can substantially bring down costs and facilitate a faster time to market. More importantly, personalization adds substantial value to any product and increases customers’ willingness to pay, easily offsetting any cost increase.

What is the biggest barrier to personalization?

Many things need to come together for personalization to go fully mainstream. In addition to the technical capacity and brands’ willingness to take risks with personalization, the process from the consumer end must also be accessible. However, it is not always clear how to add consumer-facing personalization capabilities to an existing product. Starting with a design generated outside the core workflow of a printing application can be cumbersome and create too much friction for consumer-scale deployment.

Nevertheless, as more print applications appear in the wild and positive examples are set, user habits form, and the adoption of personalization becomes more widespread, the easier it will become for all stakeholders to adopt personalization on a larger scale.

There’s a growing trend that is making simpler personalization increasingly important, and that is the decreasing costs of hardware. Even high-end industrial printers are becoming more affordable, which means smaller shops can now acquire industrial-grade printers. However, this also brings new challenges, as smaller shops may not have the design resources to implement personalization on the frontend of their powerful hardware. This is where IMG.LY’s editor comes in - it provides design capabilities to the printer’s customers and creates an ecosystem around the editor that offers templates and other assets to use for print designs.

If you’re interested in discussing personalization or want to explore a solution for your use case, we invite you to meet us at FESPA 2023 or reach out to us directly.

My First Company Retreat with a Remote Software Company

Neslihan — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 16:11:00 GMT

When I joined IMG.LY in 2020, we were all working in our then-sole office in Germany. Retreats had already taken place in the past. Only three months in, we transitioned to a remote-first team. As a newcomer, I initially worried that this transition would make it harder to connect with colleagues and fully understand our vision.

My main concern was learning about our solutions and streamlining my work to make my mark. Yet we all remember that year’s headlines. I was all too aware of the unexpected obstacles that other organizations were experiencing during the pandemic. Despite this, our team’s close-knit communication and connections with one another almost felt illicitly good, even amidst the turmoil. What seemed like sheer luck to me was due to the goal-setting and planning of my team, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Going from local to a global team — what has changed? And what do retreats even do for people who are apart most of the time anyway?

There’s No Old Normal

Even when we were all working in the same office, IMG.LY remained a tech-driven company, relying on digital tools for day-to-day operations. While this may be obvious for some, I can recall our People Experience Manager cringing in disbelief during my first weeks when I presented her with meeting notes and project outlines scribbled on paper, which I promptly discarded. Ensuring that information is easily accessible to both the team and the individual is essential, after all. In response to my antiquated approach, the company swiftly upgraded my laptop to a sleek MacBook Pro, allowing me to work more effectively. Everyone used online collaboration tools, communicated through Slack, documented with Notion, and relied on cloud services when necessary, helping to streamline and simplify our work processes.

When we were co-located, we embraced flexible working hours and trusted our team members to determine their optimal work schedule. However, we know that without clear boundaries, such as companies claiming to be “families,” work-life balance can quickly erode. That’s a no-no. We prioritize maintaining a healthy balance between work and personal life, which is why we strictly adhere to a policy of not exceeding regular working hours per day. We maintain communication by overlapping a minimum of our working hours with one another and updating our online status on Slack to indicate our availability. By setting boundaries and taking control over our schedules, we strive to create an environment where team members can thrive both professionally and personally.

Looking back, we were well-equipped to work from home from the beginning. However, we recognized that this was not a temporary situation, and we didn’t believe in returning to the “old normal.” We saw this as the start of the New Work era and embraced it fully. This new way of working enabled us to remove geographic barriers, allowing us to attract top talent from all over the world. As a growing company, we no longer need to rely on physical office spaces either.

While we initially started as a local German team with a few members working together in person for several years, we have since expanded our team to over 50 individuals across more than ten countries. While there certainly have been plenty of company originals who co-worked for years, many more teammates joined who have not met in person yet.

Better, Taller, Faster, Stronger

Hiring remotely can leave a sense of wish to meet colleagues in person. In 2022, our remote-first company took a leap and organized our first retreat in Lisbon, Portugal. We were all excited to finally put 4K faces to the names we had grown so accustomed to seeing on our screens. The initial ice-breaking moments were filled with laughs as we discovered that our preconceived notions about each other’s physical appearances were often wildly off-base. “I thought you were much taller!” — or one of our petite colleagues turned out to be a friendly giant standing at an impressive 6’4”, and effortlessly handed me my heavy luggage as if it were a feather. These moments of revelation went beyond our Zoom experiences, and we knew we were in for a memorable few days. We came together for dinner and drinks by the hotel pool, bonding over refreshing drinks and shared interests.

Work Smart, Play Hard

Our schedule afforded us a great blend of getting to know one another, sharing knowledge across teams, and the solidification of our grasp of our mission and vision.

Each day at 10 a.m., we convened in our hotel’s co-working space to explore our latest ideas and conduct workshops that would help us develop a more comprehensive understanding of our solutions, improve cross-team and client connections, and get to know each other better. Although virtual communication tools have facilitated remote work, they can fall short in establishing authentic connections. Meeting my colleagues in person provided an opportunity to observe their body language and expressions, giving me a deeper insight into their personalities and work styles that I can apply to our virtual communication. We also zeroed in on our goals, recognizing that working in tandem toward a common objective is essential to seamless cooperation and to keeping our focus on our work and purpose as a company.

After our daily team gatherings, we took advantage of our free time to explore the stunning beaches and coastal towns of Portugal, immersing ourselves in the rich culture and history of the region. Despite thinking we’d found the steepest street of Lisbon a few times, we were constantly surprised by the next one. Our group came together for sunset boat tours, working on that tan, neat games of Spikeball at the beach, and discovering secret rooftop bars and cozy venues around the city. Of course, we also made sure to carve out time for personal relaxation and self-care (I am always happy to go poof and recharge social batteries).

In the Same Boat

The retreat provided us with a new understanding of our colleagues that will translate well into our digital work. Additionally, the change of scenery helped refresh our mindset, leaving us feeling reinvigorated. For many of us, it was the first time meeting face-to-face, and we enjoyed the chance to take a break from our headsets and Slack Huddles.

While many things change over time, some things remain constant. Our commitment to our core values and mission to empower developers with powerful creative SDKs are among those constants. We recognize that success depends on staying at the forefront of innovation and understanding our customers’ unique needs. At IMG.LY, we believe in listening to their feedback, and delivering tailored solutions to meet their specific requirements. As we continue to adapt to an ever-evolving digital landscape, we commit to making stunning design accessible for everyone!

We are excited to plan our next retreat for this year, and are currently in the process of voting on the location. My trusted sources are saying we are heading to Montenegro.

Thanks for reading! Say hi on Twitter, or talk opportunities at IMG.LY over a coffee.

Time-Based Sprites for VE.SDK on iOS and Android

Neslihan — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 07:06:05 GMT

We are happy to extend VideoEditor SDK with a highly-requested feature: Time-Based Sprites. This new feature sets the duration of text and stickers in your video timeline. Users may now place fun stickers and text at the right moment, and give their videos a special touch.

Time-Based Sprites

The popular feature known from TikTok and Instagram Reels is now available in VE.SDK: set the starting and end point of your text or sticker. Tap your text or sticker and select Duration to determine the duration of your asset.

Unless you have specified a custom set of sticker or text actions, this feature is enabled by default since VE.SDK v10.3.0 for Android and v11.3.0 for iOS. See the official documentation for iOS or Android on Time-Based Sprites.

Why is Video Important?

Video content has become an essential medium for social media, marketing, sales, and support teams. According to marketing statistics, people are watching an average of 19 hours of online video per week in 2022. 88% of people say that they felt convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. The growing trend and preference of consumers are why businesses are shifting their attention toward including videos in their strategies and applications.

We commit to extending our video editing features to help developers meet the demand, save resources and streamline the process of building great applications. Let us have a look at our previous VE.SDK releases:

Video Composition
Users may seamlessly edit their footage by trimming and adjusting video files with advanced filters. Finally, they can set the correct order of their video sequences to create a single composition.

Audio Support
Replace or add sound in videos by loading audio files. Users can trim their audio according to their footage. Developers can provide media libraries for audio and video files. That way, users may access media by choosing from labeled folders, such as genre, theme, or artist names.

Force Trim
The VE.SDK trim tool allows users to determine the start and end frame of a video clip and change the duration of their footage. Now you can enforce a minimum and maximum length of videos. Force Trim will come in handy for use cases, such as social media stories and posts popularly limited to bite size 15 or 60 seconds by widely loved apps – see TikTok or Instagram. Adopting a ready-to-use solution like VE.SDK will set you on your path to creating equally beautiful apps.

Thanks for reading! Let us know what you think on Twitter – or check out our Newsletter for more accelerating updates.

May the Force Trim be with you: A New Feature in VE.SDK

Neslihan — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 15:01:31 GMT

It has been a fantastic year for video editing – the video composition tool and audio support enhanced our VideoEditor SDK offerings, enabling developers to bring more high-quality features right into your products and apps. Today, we deliver another feature to enhance your developer experience.

Force Trim

The VideoEditor SDK trim tool allows your users to determine the start and end frame of a video clip, and thus change the duration of their footage. Now you are also able to enforce a minimum and maximum duration of videos.

Additionally, the update allows configuring the startup behavior of your editor. Possible values are always, ifNeeded, and silent (the default).

always will always automatically present the composition tool or the trim tool after opening the editor and force your users to change the length of the video(s).
ifNeeded will only present
a) the composition tool, if your initial composition is longer than the maximum duration or shorter than the minimum duration, or
b) the trim tool, if your initial video is longer than the maximum duration.
silent will automatically trim the video to the maximum duration without opening any tool.

Find the right set-up for your use-case in our official documentation for iOS and Android. Once the trim tool is part of your subscription, you are ready to enhance your user experience.

Frameworks

Of course, our wrappers for Flutter, Cordova and React Native have been updated to support force trim.

Built to Build

Force Trim will come in handy for use cases, such as social media stories and posts, that have been popularly limited to bite size 15 or 60 seconds by widely loved apps – see TikTok or Instagram. Adopting a ready-to-use solution like VideoEditor SDK will set you straight onto your path of creating equally beautiful apps by saving you resources and streamlining your process.

A Sleek User Experience

Newly in is the interactive and animated timeline, that now elegantly adjusts to the trimming process.

Aware of how time-consuming and costly app development can be for you, our team is committed to delivering more features to enhance your developer experience. Feel free to reach out to us on Twitter with any questions, comments, or suggestions!

Thank you for reading, and happy development!

Video Composition and Audio Support for VE.SDK

Neslihan — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 14:59:10 GMT

After launching VE.SDK in 2019, we have continuously worked on more features to free up your engineering resources. As developers, you always leverage our SDK to create new breathtaking experiences. That is why we love to hear your requests, and we listened.

Seamless Video Composition

A recently requested feature is to merge footage into a single video. That is now possible with Video Composition. Users may seamlessly edit their footage by trimming and adjusting video files with advanced filters. Finally, they can set the correct order of their video sequences to create a single composition.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/amSv26MkKbg?feature=oembed

Video: Allow users to edit, brand, and merge their footage on the go.

High-Quality Audio Support

With our latest update, you can now replace or add sound in videos by loading audio files. Users can trim their audio according to their footage.

Customize: Audio and Video Libraries

Developers can provide media libraries for audio and video files. That way, users may access media by choosing from labeled folders, such as genre, theme, album, or artist names.

Get Started

Find our free demonstration app on Google Play for Android and App Store for iOS. Our VE.SDK Documentation will guide you through the swift implementation process.

We can’t wait to hear your feedback and see your creations – @us on Twitter!

Flutter: Our new plugins made for Dart developers

Leon — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 14:12:09 GMT

Flutter enables developers to build native iOS and Android applications with a single Dart codebase whilst the application’s performance is kept at a very high native-like level. This is even more ensured by the huge amount of Flutter plugins, which wrap native code for the use in Dart.

With the rising demand for photo and video editing solutions, we were committed to provide plugins that enable developers to use our native PhotoEditor SDK and our native VideoEditor SDK within their Flutter applications. This said we are proud to announce that the Flutter plugins photo_editor_sdk and video_editor_sdk are now extending our list of cross-platform modules. The combination of both products allows you to add comprehensive image and video editing tools to your Flutter application for iOS and Android - within minutes.

Usage

While building the plugins, we focused on making the use and integration of our existing SDKs as easy as possible and minimizing the required platform-specific knowledge and skillset. Therefore, using the plugins is as easy as writing a single line of Dart code:

Customization

Furthermore, we wanted to keep the high level of customization options like cropping or resizing that our customers are used to in our products. In this sense, we created a dedicated Configuration Dart class which serves the option to customize the SDK to your needs without ever leaving the Flutter world.
Using the configuration is fast and easy:

Where to go from here?

Feel free to explore our packages, usage examples as well as the API documentation on pub.dev and/ or GitHub.
We released our new Flutter plugins under open-source licenses, so feedback and pull requests are welcome.

Introducing Our New Company Brand

Neslihan — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 16:52:13 GMT

We are updating our company branding to emphasize that our SDKs originate from IMG.LY and pave the way for the products and technology we are working on quietly behind the scenes. We cannot wait to show you our next racer on the journey to democratize design. As always: what is done in the dark will come to light. So while we are tuning our engines, you may play the soundtrack to The Fast and the Furious!

IMG.LY is now the new company brand for our team members, our products, and our services. Underneath the new look, PE.SDK and VE.SDK are still the same fantastic PhotoEditor SDK and VideoEditor SDK.

Update on 03.01.2022

This brand change has generated some interest in IMG.LY’s storied company history, so we’ll give some background into our first pivot back when our SDKs were still just glints in the eyes of our developers.

Odds are that veterans of the web who have been on Twitter since some time in the early to mid 2010s have come across a tweet that used img.ly (back then everything was lowercase) as an image sharing service. While img.ly filled a real need and had decent traction, the sword of Damocles that is platform dependence was always hanging over our heads. Inevitably, Twitter developed its own solution and we were honorably discharged from one day to the next.

As crushing a blow as that was, it allowed us to take stock of everything else we had built; mainly a fantastic team of engineers with deep expertise in image processing. In addition while building a camera app on top of our Twitter service we experienced first hand how challenging it is to build image editing and processing features from scratch.

We started talking to other companies and software development agencies and uncovered a lack of production grade solutions. The rest, as they say, is history.

Since then we have set our sights on an even more ambitious mission; to become the creative engine of the digital world, empowering everyone to build first grade design capabilities into their products. This year we took a first big step towards this goal by releasing the CreativeEditor SDK with advanced features such as templating and automations.

Cordova: A plugin made for JavaScript developers

Hasan — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 10:59:07 GMT

In a perfect world, Cordova should enable web developers to target multiple platforms with one codebase. Yet in reality, developers using Cordova to build cross-platform apps, need to be experienced with the development tool stacks and programming languages of the native platforms. This is particularly the case when integrating native third-party libraries from scratch, as we detailed in a previous blog post.

We are proud to introduce our all-new Cordova plugin integrations [cordova-plugin-photoeditorsdk](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cordova-plugin-photoeditorsdk) and [cordova-plugin-videoeditorsdk](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cordova-plugin-videoeditorsdk) for our native PhotoEditor SDK and VideoEditor SDK versions. The interplay of both products allows you to add comprehensive image and video editing tools to your Cordova app for iOS and Android - within minutes.

While crafting our new plugins, the primary objective was to minimize the required platform-specific knowledge and skillset. We are thrilled to provide a wealth of configuration and customization options to developers without forcing them to leave their JavaScript tooling and programming environment.

Bye-bye native platform-specific asset management

Our new utility function loadResource() simplifies the process to pass static assets to the native SDKs. By using it, e.g., in your index.js file, our plugins will take care of resolving the correct platform-specific asset file paths.

The following snippet demonstrates this convenience for customizing the sticker tool (lines 15 to 30) and for passing an input image to the editor (line 33). The only requirement is to make the corresponding images available in your app’s www/assets folder.

Further examples

We created a separate repository each for our photo editor example project and video editor example project to prevent our sample assets from unnecessarily increasing the size of your node_modules folder when installing our plugins.

Ionic

Ionic is built on Cordova, so you’re able to use the plugin for your Ionic application as well. Just take a look at our repositories for our photo editor example project and video editor example project, to get started with integrating our SDKs with your Ionic app.

Make it pop - introducing Animated and Smart Stickers

Michael K. — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:31:18 GMT

Our latest release: brand-new sticker types for iOS and Android

We are always on the lookout to improve our editor tools to engage users to be creative and add beautifully designed content.

Our latest release for both mobile PhotoEditor SDK and VideoEditor SDK takes our stickers to the next level: With animated and smart stickers, we added popular features best known from apps like Instagram and TikTok – making editing more dynamic, expressive, and engaging. You can now capture your favorite moments by adding more context to your photos and videos. Maybe you finally landed that kickflip on a warm Monday morning, so you add the date and weather information. You can now also add your animated logo.

Our animated stickers not only provide you with a set of premade assets that come with the latest version of the editor but also let you integrate your custom ones tailored to your company and brand.

Smart Stickers on the other hand open up a whole range of new possibilities, visualizing dynamic information like weather data, location, or dates. Like our text design feature, it’s the ease of use that makes these stickers special – simply cycle through different variations with a tap.

Take a look at all updates and assets on our Mobile SDK page.

PS: Do you have feedback or suggestions for new smart stickers you want to see from us? Let us know in our Quick-Survey. We’re happy to hear from you!

Company – IMG.LY Blog

One SDK to Power Them All: Announcing IMG.LY SDK

From Fragmentation to Unification

One SDK to Power Them All

Long-Term Support for PE. and VE.SDK

What’s Next?

IMG.LY x AI

1. Deep Integration of AI Capabilities into Editing Workflows

2. Enabling AI Agents as Creative Collaborators

3. AI-Powered SDK Configuration and Customization

Looking Forward

CreativeEditor SDK now Supports Flutter on iOS & Android

Getting Started

Editor UI Presets

The Only Truly Cross Platform SDK

Fully Customizable UI

What’s Next?

Are you Looking for React Native?

Plugin Release Part 1: Customizing the UI & Quick Actions

Extension Points in the UI

Customizing UI Components

Registering New Components

Feature-level Control

Examples: Background Removal and Cut-out lines

Get Started

What’s Next

Unleash Creativity with CE.SDK’s New Plugin System

Built for Modification

Unlocking the AI Revolution

Boosting Customer Autonomy

Accelerate Product Expansion

Key Concepts

What Can You Build with our Plugin System?

Custom Actions

Custom Tools

Custom Assets & Presets

Custom Libraries

Custom Editor Behavior

Custom User Feedback

What’s Next

From Online Oasis to Coastal Celebration: Our Retreat in Montenegro

The Online Oasis: Thriving or Drying Up?

The Journey to a Goal

Work & Play: Is a Fixed Schedule Relaxing?

End of One Journey, Beginning of Another

IMG.LY Announces Open Source JavaScript Library for In-Browser Background Removal

In-Browser Background Removal

Data Protection

Seamless Integration with IMG.LY’s CE.SDK

Empower Yourself with IMG.LY’s Background Removal

Update: Node.js Support

IMG.LY Partners with Soundstripe to Infuse Video Editing with Epic Royalty-Free Music & SFX

Streamlining Music Licensing for Digital Platforms

Effortless Music Selection

Interview: Talking Personalization With Richard Askam

IMG.LY Partners with Getty Images to Revolutionize Image Integration

Empower your Developers and Users

Get Started

Taking CreativeEditor SDK Cross-Platform

Build Your Own UI Anywhere

Starter Kit UIs

Share & Cross-Edit Templates

A Universal Rendering Engine

IMG.LY's Founders Discuss Personalization on the FESPA Podcast

Key Takeaways

Where does IMG.LY sit in the world of personalization?

What are the unique capabilities of IMG.LY’s SDK for personalization?

What is the state of personalization in the print industry?

What is the biggest barrier to personalization?

My First Company Retreat with a Remote Software Company

There’s No Old Normal

Better, Taller, Faster, Stronger

Work Smart, Play Hard

In the Same Boat

Time-Based Sprites for VE.SDK on iOS and Android

Time-Based Sprites

Why is Video Important?

May the Force Trim be with you: A New Feature in VE.SDK

Force Trim

Frameworks