SoftOrbits, a software development company founded in 2006 by Eugene Ustinenkov, focuses on building utilities that help photography enthusiasts deal with tedious and difficult technical tasks like format conversion or stamp removal. Starting as a small team of software experts, SoftOrbits has evolved into one of the leading niche companies with over 300,000 users and more than 1,000,000 yearly downloads.
While the team initially prioritized small-scale software designed for amateurs with no technical photography background, its recent introduction of AI features to the Image Editor has gained a lot of traction with professionals. According to SoftOrbits' internal data, experts account for over a quarter of the software's total user base.
"I think these numbers may seem a bit unexpected -- they certainly were for us at first. However, they're quite telling of the current state of the industry. Experts no longer view AI as a gimmick, and you can see it everywhere: from the Coca-Cola AI advertisements to AI usage in movie production by Marvel. We're no longer on the verge of living in a world with AI-generated content as the standard -- we're already here," says Eugene Ustinenkov, CEO of SoftOrbits and AlarmFront.
Why is the AI Photo Editor popular with professional photographers?
As Eugene Ustinenkov admits, initially AI Photo Editor was aimed at marketing teams and content creators, as well as general users, addressing their need for quick and simple solutions to common issues with images and photos: from quickly removing backgrounds and objects to fixing the lighting. From a few conversations with customers, it turned out that the speed the AI tool provides has become its major selling point even for professional photographers.
"We can see how there is almost no way a pro can compete with these tools when it comes to speed, so a lot of photographers start integrating AI into their workflow. Most of the experts we've spoken to say that new customers expect different timeframes, so you either adapt or get left out. AI Photo Editor comes in handy here, because it isn't about generating images -- photographers aren't particularly enthusiastic about this -- but because it helps deal with repetitive and time-consuming tasks," says Eugene Ustinenkov, CEO of SoftOrbits and Candidate of Technical Sciences.
The current version of SoftOrbits AI Photo Editor supports images with up to 8K resolution, provides multi-format export capabilities, and offers RAW file support. It is most commonly used to change the lighting, enhance portraits, remove objects, manipulate backgrounds, and apply special effects, but that's not the full extent of its capabilities.
Recently, SoftOrbits introduced a prompt-based photo editing feature, which means that the tool's possibilities are only limited by the user's imagination. As Eugene explains, it is this functionality that became one of the selling points for the software even among professionals.
"The industry inevitably gravitates toward greater AI adoption, and you can see so many startups offering AI-based photo editing, leaving less and less market space for traditional approaches. It doesn't mean that experts will get replaced -- as long as they keep up with the technology and find ways to seamlessly integrate it to provide a better service, everyone wins", says Eugene Ustinenkov, CEO of SoftOrbits with 10+ years of software development experience.
The impact of AI and the future of SoftOrbits
The AI trend has affected SoftOrbits as well: This year, the team has integrated the technology into seven of their utilities, and right now, it helps SoftOrbits' users with unblurring images, denoising photos, removing watermarks, and more. The team doesn't intend to stop here and already has plans to integrate AI into other solutions, focusing on increasing user-friendliness, speed, and simplicity of use.
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With the recent increase in popularity of SoftOrbits' tools among professionals, the team is focused on not only adding extra AI features but also increasing the software's general availability by switching to a SaaS model of distribution.
"SaaS was one of our goals for the past few years, but we were mostly focused on other aspects of our company's work. Now we see that this has become a priority -- removing hardware requirements and ensuring instant global access is becoming an industry standard. We already provide SaaS solutions to our corporate partners, but the goal is to reach our everyday users as well -- and we will achieve it soon enough," says Hannes Jansen, writer and editor at SoftOrbits.
Want to connect with SoftOrbits?
Whether you're a client interested in SoftOrbits' products or a business owner willing to partner with the team, you can reach out at support@softorbits.com or visit softorbits.net.
