April 16, 2019 – Shutterstock, Inc. today announced the launch of its first Augmented Reality feature, available on the Shutterstock customer iOS application. The latest update to the iOS application includes a new “View in Room” button that allows users to access their camera phone and virtually position any of Shutterstock’s 250 million images against the wall in a room of their choosing.
Shutterstock’s in-house mobile team leveraged the iOS ARKit framework to create the AR experience, enabling customers to interact with the company’s expansive image library in a new way. Shutterstock stated that its customers are increasingly using images from its library in the form of in-home, in-store or in-office artwork, for retail spaces or for restaurant decor.
“We have been committed to experimenting with cutting-edge technologies for over fifteen years. After years of advancing our in-house computer vision technology to enhance search capabilities on web and mobile, we are very excited to announce our first AR-powered mobile viewing experience for customers,” said Jon Oringer, Founder and CEO of Shutterstock. “This is yet another great project to have been developed from its initial iteration at our annual employee Hackathon, ‘Hack to the Future’. We decided to put this hack into production because of its potential to have an immediate customer impact.”
With the Shutterstock customer app, users can select an option to “View in Room” which will switch to the phone’s camera mode. By pointing the camera at a wall, the app will identify the wall space and populate the image directly onto the wall. The user can then adjust the size to get a better idea of what the image would look like on the wall.
The “View in Room” tool is available on the Shutterstock Customer iPhone application in the app store today.
Image credit: Shutterstock
About the author
Sam Sprigg
Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.
