Soon you can edit images without leaving your stock image library

Soon you can edit images without leaving your stock image library

Inmagine's latest offering will provide seamless image editing capabilities and premium photos.

Whether it is a corporate presentation, a school project, or a personal blog post, stock images help to create visual impact. One of the common challenges when doing creative work is finding high-quality stock images that fit a specific purpose.

To fill this gap, royalty-free digital stock agency 123RF is integrating editing capabilities into their stock image library. Soon, users can source for stock images and edit them seamlessly on the 123RF platform.

Inmagine expands reach with Pixlr

The integration is enabled by the recent acquisition of cloud-based editing tool Pixlr by the Inmagine group.

The Inmagine group is a fast-growing global company based in Kuala Lumpur that owns 123RF and other content libraries such as HungryJPEG.com, StockUnlimited.com and Designs.net. It has 40 offices around the world and 450 staff.

Andy Sitt, the founder of Inmagine, says: "A lot of people who use Pixlr are designers. If you look at the audience and user base, Pixlr was a natural fit to 123RF."

The process of integration is already underway. Sitt hopes that this integration will reach more people on more design platforms, increasing the number of visitors to its content libraries from 40 million to 50 million.

Pixlr was originally owned by Autodesk, Inc.

In the next few months, Pixlr's easy-to-use suite of cloud-based image editing tools and utilities, such as Pixlr Editor, Pixlr-O-matic and Pixlr Express, will be integrated into the 123RF structure. The company is intending to revamp and relaunch towards the next few months. The tools will be available on both web and mobile.

Eventually, Sitt has the vision of building a holistic global creative eco-system that will offer a broad range of services to global corporations and individuals alike.

The pioneer looks to the future

When Sitt founded the Inmagine group in 2000 with a base in Kuala Lumpur, he was one of the pioneers who offered internet-based digital advertising images. Thanks to competitively priced inventory, its clientele base expanded rapidly, counting McDonald's and Yellow Pages among its ranks.

In 2003, Inmagine Group began advertising with Google Adwords. Although Google Adwords was a relatively new service, it helped the group scale worldwide. Inmagine started gaining global clients from the US and the UK.

In line with his vision of building a holistic global creative eco-system, Sitt says: "We want to make design accessible to anyone, whether it is an image, or a logo. We have billions of search points and tons of data that we can utilise. We have 200 full time employees working in design, so we can adapt well and generate a lot every single day."

Sitt says part of his role is to educate people that it is better to source a quality image via stock image libraries than use a low-resolution image scanned from the internet illegally. This gives credit to the creators of the images.

To help businesses and creative professional communicate via visuals more effectively, 123RF has recently extended its database to include a premium range of high-end imagery named EVO Collection. Users can enjoy one-stop access to EVO images and millions of regular high-quality micro-stock images at 123RF.com.

Photo: Inmagine Group
The EVO Collection is a luxury collection of high-end imagery. Photo: Inmagine Group

In the long term, Inmagine hopes to focus on expanding its video and audio assets, which currently account for a small portion of the revenue. Sitt believes that expanding these inventories would broaden the creative eco-system further.

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