SA国际传媒

Adobe鈥檚 venerable Photoshop isn鈥檛 always the top choice for those looking for quick and straightforward photo editing. Especially in a mobile context.

People are looking for new ways to create artistic photos, often on the go. Though Instagram and Snapchat already cater to to share every bit of one鈥檚 daily life, over the past few years, many photo mobile editing apps have popped up to address the demand for creating better and more diverse visual content.

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Within the last ten years, around $199 million has gone into these startups, according to . 2014 and on the largest number of deals and funding rounds, totaling about $161.4 million.

For the new generation whose lives revolve around smart pocket gadgets and are eager to capture everything visually, mobile has become more and more important, and has already made lifestyle changes.

鈥淕en Z has been brought up with both the Internet and in an increasingly mobile-first world, with cameras in smartphones,鈥� n, CEO and Founder of , told SA国际传媒 News. 鈥淭his has led to images becoming the primary way in which we communicate, on networks, via messaging and on mobile,鈥�

Let鈥檚 follow where the money is being invested in mobile photo apps.

Key Players

Out of all photo editing app companies, has raised the most capital, $70 million to be exact. and closed its $40 million Series A in 2014. The following year, the Series A investors and participated in its $30 million Series B round. When asked what unique qualities it offers its investors, the company declined to comment.

VSCO users can edit photos and curate collections, but unlike the case with most social platforms, they can (no comment or heart buttons for you). In 2015, the Oakland-based company acquired and to more photography to the real world and to machine learning into photo curation.

ranks second in the total amount of money raised. Its $25 million Series A in 2015 came from investors such as and . The next year, and joined its $20 million Series B round.

To date, it seems unlikely that PicsArt has let its investors down. With more than 400 million installs and 90 million MAUs (monthly active users), reported by the company itself, the free app has been in U.S. photo and video app category for four years in a row.

Compared to VSCO, which focuses more on filters, PicsArt lets users share collages and drawings with friends. In 2016, PicsArt introduced 鈥渋mage remixing,鈥� which enables any creator within the community to make their images editable by other creators.

Some photo editing and sharing apps have largely operated under the radar in terms of fundraising, but have attracted love from their users and the media regardless. , the app that employs AI and turns your photos into Van Gogh or Picasso style, has about five to ten million MAUs, according to . Others include , a cross-platform software that enables anyone to become a pro photo editor, and , which helps photographers select photos using AI.

Investment Landscape

Out of all the we鈥檝e looked at, most are Seed, Angel, Series A, or Series B rounds. The prevalence of early-stage capital indicates that VCs are merely laying tentative bets on the burgeoning photo editing app industry.

Indeed, photo editing startups are riding the wave of social media and expansion. As smartphones become commonplace, more people connect in the virtual world, and necessitate the ability to readily and visually share something online.

鈥淭he idea of a camera in every pocket feels just a revolutionary as having an Internet browser in every pocket,鈥� , a General Partner at , told us. Nabeel led the Series A investment in , a startup that provides personal storage services. (Note: Picturelife 18 months after being acquired.)

Addressing SA国际传媒 News, Avoyan, CEO and Founder of PicsArt, added that 鈥渁n increased demand for photo and image editing on the mobile鈥� makes the photo editing app category especially appealing for investors, considering that 鈥減eople will create 1.2 trillion photos this year alone.鈥�

The Future of Photo Editing Apps

More photos are being edited, shared, and discovered than before, but where exactly is the photo editing industry going? Through talking to investors and entrepreneurs, SA国际传媒 News summarized a few notable trends in the space:

First, the AI craze has spilled over to the photography world. More photo editing startups are incorporating machine learning and computer vision into their software to improve user experience and create advanced features. For example, Palo Alto-based startup is making huge investments in AI. In fact, half of its team currently works on developing fast image recognition and segmentation algorithms on mobile devices, according to its CEO.

鈥淸AI can take over] mundane tasks for users and do them really well. For example, matching exposures, better denoise, better reconstruction of image details,鈥� , Founder and CEO at Polarr, said to SA国际传媒 News. 鈥淭o make AI really consumer worthy, it needs to be 99 percent reliable all the time.鈥�

Second, for photo apps, the intuitive next step to expand user base and revenue is through enabling the editing of other visual channels such as videos, gifs, and stickers. Currently, of generating profits is through charging for advanced filters and features based on either a one-time fee or a subscription model.

have already gone down the path of diversification: PicsArt started off as a photo studio and then gifs, animation, and video. Over the past two years, VSCO has also taken on and .

Finally, a scaling tactic, in terms of revenue and usership, can be made through community-building. Once the app gains enough users, it has hopes of evolving into a social platform, a process that , , and have been experimenting with.

In the world of mobile photo editing, scaling from an app to an actual business can be difficult, especially when the app鈥檚 lie in the hands of download numbers, DAUs, and MAUs.

That said, there is quite a lot of potential in the mobile photo editing space. Even though visual social media giants like Instagram are looming over the fledgling photo apps, the apps that we spoke with weren鈥檛 afraid of them. Instagram is a social nexus, they said, while they are building editing tools for new generations.

While the overall photo editing space appears to be on the rise, most VC funding is concentrated within a few prominent apps. And that means that the pool of likely winners may be shallower than you have expected.

You can apply filters to your vacation pictures and share your dog photos however you want, but VCs are not yet ready to go all out on the photo editing industry.

Methodology

We only looked at (neither acquired nor public) that fall under the photo editing category.