FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
STUTTGART, GERMANY – June 8th, 2020 – autoRetouch – the first end-to-end, automated image processing platform – launched its Open Beta phase. Powered by AI, the company currently offers a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform for automated, bulk-processing of Fashion product images.
Users simply create an account on the autoRetouch website, where they are able to try the service for free with up to 10 images, and then buy additional credits in order to process more images on a pay-as-you-go basis. The service itself is designed around the concept of bulk-processing images via workflows. Workflows are created by ‘chaining up’ different components in a simple drag and drop interface. Each component represents an automated version of a common image-editing task, which would normally be done manually in a photo editing tool. The product currently supports the automation of repetitive, yet highly impactful image-editing work, such as background removal and skin retouch. By automating these tasks users are able to lower the average editing time on a typical fashion product image from minutes to seconds.
To achieve this, autoRetouch utilizes two cutting-edge technologies, namely, computer vision with the help of machine learning, as well as, scalable cloud infrastructure.
Revolutionizing the product image processing supply chain
“The production process of product images in online fashion — from photoshoot to post-production work, to bringing the images to online catalogs — is a highly inefficient and expensive process at the moment” said autoRetouch Co-Founder and CEO, Alex Ciorapciu. “However, if you leverage the latest computer vision technology and combine it with the scalable processing power of today’s cloud infrastructure, you can change the industry paradigm from manual work to automation; and with that not only save costs but deliver more speed and higher output consistency throughout the process,” he added.
Julian Eckerle, Co-Founder and CRO at autoRetouch, who has been active across the SaaS and AI industry in the last 12 years, said that AI is now well beyond being just a hype technology. “We’ve reached a level of maturity whereby AI can deliver value at scale. In the case of autoRetouch, we use AI in conjunction with cloud infrastructure to facilitate the bulk-processing of hundreds of Fashion product images, simultaneously, while at the same time enabling our customers to retain full creative control over the finished images” said Eckerle.
autoRetouch in the time of COVID-19
The launch of autoRetouch is unexpectedly timely. As the global economy assesses the impact and slowly recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing is already clear: The steady move from Offline- to E-commerce that occurred over the past decade has accelerated even further. “With autoRetouch we want to do our part to help retailers and everyone involved in the E-commerce image editing supply chain to scale their operations in this difficult time and take some of the most unrewarding and repetitive parts of the image production process off their shoulders”, said Alex Ciorapciu. “That’s why the price point of €0,10 per processed image is an important part of autoRetouch’s value proposition” he added and further elaborates, “we don’t just want to make it easy, but also highly rewarding financially, for our customers to place trust in an automated image editing service”, said Ciorapciu. For further perspective, Julian Eckerle explained, “autoRetouch’s value proposition and ROI is designed to be immediately verifiable, which is a potent change of pace from the more traditional software evaluation processes across the industry” said Eckerle.
Where it all began and what’s next
Asked where the idea for autoRetouch originated, Ciorapciu said, “autoRetouch was born from a project within the Data Science department at Breuninger”. Breuninger is a highly innovative luxury fashion retailer from Stuttgart, Germany which had the goal to optimize the post-production costs per image in the company’s content production division. During the evaluation of the project’s impressive initial results — Breuninger expects to save up to 90% of its image editing cost thanks to autoRetouch — it became clear that automated product image processing was a universal value proposition for retail businesses. To tap into this vast opportunity autoRetouch is now a standalone company aiming to bring the first end-to-end, automated image processing platform to market globally. Breuninger is committed to supporting autoRetouch on this journey and as such has provided an initial low seven-figure seed investment into the newly formed start-up. autoRetouch currently employs 11 people and expects to continue to grow its workforce in the coming months. Moving forward it plans to expand its offering into various other categories for automated product image editing (e.g. Electronics) and ultimately strives to shape the new SaaS category of end-to-end, automated image processing.
About autoRetouch
autoRetouch is the first end-to-end, automated image processing platform. Powered by AI, the company currently offers a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform for automated, bulk-processing of Fashion product images. For contact and more information visit www.autoretouch.com.
Keywords/Tags: product image editing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, machine learning, SaaS, computer vision, product photography, clipping path, image editing
autoRetouch
Theodor-Heuss-Str. 10
70174 Stuttgart
Germany
Reina Regis
autoRetouch is the first end-to-end, automated image processing platform. We offer automated, bulk image processing for Fashion product imagery online. Optimize your Fashion product imagery processing operation. If you’re looking for a more efficient way to remove the background, apply drop shadows, or retouch skin for your Fashion product imagery, look no further. Currently it may take days or weeks from briefing to photoshoot and even longer until your finished Fashion product imagery is ready to be published online. Why? For the most part, the current method of retouching a fashion product image after the initial photo shoot is still entirely manual and as such inefficient and costly. This paradigm changes with autoRetouch.
This release was published on openPR.
