Popular app development company Lightricks has made a major announcement, revealing that its industry-leading photo editing AI tools have come to Android via the Photoleap app.
Often, the latest innovations in photo editing have been iOS-only, and there can be a long delay before these features come to Android phones. Yet this time, the features came to iOS only a few months ago, and they are already available through the Google Play Store.
The new release can likely be attributed to the huge success that AI-powered visual tools have triggered for Lightricks so far. The company has seen 150,000 installs per week since introducing generative AI tools in August 2022, according to a spokesperson.
“Photoleap’s new features show how AI-powered creativity tools can work together in a single app to bring new levels of expressivity in photo and image making tools,” said Brett Welch, VP of Photo at Lightricks.
Relentless AI Demand
Given all of the hype surrounding AI, it’s unlikely that anyone is surprised that ChatGPT is the fastest-growing app in history. That platform raced to 100 million monthly active users just two months after launch. While the app has many interesting features, it specializes in one style of interface which leaves for other products to dominate other niches.
Lightricks products have yielded over 50 million downloads across Android users alone, indicating that its user base is one of the largest in the world. Before the general public’s eyes were opened to the possibilities of AI, Lightricks already had exceptional research and innovation labs.
This enabled the company to offer the first consumer mobile editing tool to combine artistic capabilities with generative AI, through Photoleap. They were an undisputed leader in the photo editing app domain and have adapted well to the trends of the industry, triggered by the wider release of OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 image generation engine last September.
There has been a raft of new competitors in the space hoping a window was opened to gain market share. While some companies such as Lensa rapidly rose up the charts with AI-driven “magic avatars,” they quickly fell again, as they didn’t have the depth of features or execution of ideas to keep users around in the long run.
As Photoleap already had such a strong user base, the addition of AI tools were stacked upon an already loved reliable user interface.
AI supercharge
While the Android version of Photoleap already had text-to-image generation, the iOS version had many more features which create a deeper experience. With the latest Android version, that gap has been virtually eliminated.
Some of the key new features:
- AI Enhance – Photoleap can take photos captured in poor conditions and make them seem as good as if they were shot in a professional environment, at the click of a button.
- AI Transform – Photoleap enables users to click any part of a photo and transform it with generative AI with only their imagination as a limitation.
- AI Scenes – Photoleap allows users to upload photos of an environment and to generate several creative styles. For instance, transforming the user’s street into a scene from a movie.
- Colorize – Photoleap uses AI models to accurately colorize a black and white photos.
- Remove Object – Photoleap allows users to remove unwanted elements from a photo with ease.
- Change Background – Photoleap allows users to change the background of their image to make the subject standout as best as possible.
Building the suite
One interesting aspect of the strategy Lightricks used to gain a foothold in the face of growing consumer demand was to integrate features from other parts of their portfolio.
In particular, they have brought the “Animate” feature from Motionleap to Photoleap. This allows users to quickly add motion to what were originally still images, which can create striking visual effects.
Other Lightricks-developed apps suggest potential for further crossover. The company can use the research and development carried out with one particular app in mind and also bring it across to the other apps in their suite. This creates an ecosystem which is compelling to end users, especially creators.
Creators who rely on photo and video content may feel less overwhelmed by the rapid innovation in the industry if they are able to stay within the Lightricks ecosystem. This means they will have a familiar user interface rather than needing to learn a new app layout every time AI capabilities make advances.
Conclusion
The enhancement of the Photoleap app on Android is important for creators to keep pace with their peers using Apple products.
For Lightricks, it’s a crucial move to secure market share from the proliferation of new AI empowered apps. Due to loyalty created from a history of reliable apps and stickiness from an ecosystem of apps, this should help secure loyalty among content creators, both amateur and professional.