Visual 1st provide guidance in today’s turbulent imaging landscape

Now in its 14th year, the Visual 1st conference has become the go-to gathering for imaging-industry executives. This annual fall event, now in its second year at KQED studios in San Francisco, was held Sept. 29-30. The event attracted 180 attendees from 17 countries, including 37% from outside the United States this year. The

The first day kicks off with The Dead Pixels Society Coffee Meetup, held on Tuesday morning at Starbucks. This informal gathering brings together conference attendees prior to the event.

Fireside chats

In an industry-first fireside chat, Thomas Mehls, CEO of CEWE, and Emily Whittaker, CEO of Shutterfly, discussed artificial intelligence, changing consumer behavior and the challenges of leading two of the photo industry’s largest companies. Moderated by Hans Hartman, the discussion highlighted how both companies are investing in technology while maintaining their focus on personalized photo products.

Both executives identified automated photo selection as a major unresolved challenge. Although AI has improved photo book layouts and image organization, determining which photographs best capture a customer’s memories remains difficult.

“We have not found the Holy Grail yet,” Mehls acknowledged.

Whittaker agreed, emphasizing customers need help selecting, organizing and rediscovering their photographs. Shutterfly is also applying AI to image quality, production quality control, and fulfillment efficiency.

Whittaker also described renewed emphasis on customer experience and innovation following Shutterfly’s technology platform modernization. She said the company had uncovered “almost a latent customer obsession that had grown a little bit quiet,” prompting leadership to make customer-focused behavior a priority.

Mehls highlighted CEWE’s employee-driven innovation culture, including companywide innovation events attracting approximately 1,300 participants.

International expansion was another major topic. Mehls said CEWE’s planned acquisition of Kodak Moments, expected to close in early 2027, would transform the predominantly European company into a global retail photo printing organization: “It will also be a cultural change for us as an organization to become really global.”

Whittaker identified international growth opportunities for Snapfish, particularly in continental Europe.

Both executives expressed optimism about younger consumers’ growing interest in physical photographs.

Mehls described instant printing as a significant Gen Z phenomenon in Europe, particularly at drugstores. Whittaker pointed to Shutterfly’s retail fulfillment partnerships with CVS and Walgreens, confirming local fulfillment is “a very important option for our customers, and we see it growing as well.”

The discussion underscored a common industry challenge: Combining AI-driven convenience with the emotional value of printed photographs while adapting to new generations of consumers.

Panel Discussions

Panel discussions covered a range of imaging-related topics. The “Visuals for Memory” panel featured Nicole Healy of Mae, Marisa Humphrey of Lifeweaver, Paul Sorich of The Photo Place, and Elias Jo of Entourage Yearbooks.

Healy argued consumers are overwhelmed by digital clutter and need tools that identify meaningful memories rather than simply store photographs. Her company is developing technology to connect photos, messages, documents and other digital records into family narratives. Lifeweaver similarly uses AI to reconstruct personal histories from text conversations and photographs, adding context that images alone cannot provide.

Sorich emphasized the continuing importance of physical preservation, warning that digital files can disappear while film negatives and prints remain accessible for decades. Jo described how yearbooks are evolving through multimedia features, including QR codes linking to videos and music playlists. He also sees opportunities for AI to automate time-consuming production tasks. Privacy, authenticity and digital inheritance emerged as major concerns. Panelists stressed the importance of preserving original images and maintaining human control over storytelling.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping commercial photography, product imagery and digital content production, according to participants in the “Visuals for Commerce” panel, which featured representatives from AI creative platforms, e-commerce imaging specialists and digital asset management companies.

Katrine Rasmussen, CMO of Pixelz, described how the company processes approximately 50,000 images hourly, with AI automating about 75% of the work. Human editors remain essential for quality control, particularly for demanding fashion brands. Kirti Poonia, CEO and co-founder of CAIMERA, explained how AI can streamline fashion design, product sampling, photography and localized marketing, potentially reducing production time and costs substantially.

Robert Miyahara, VP Corporate Business Development of Cloudinary, emphasized the importance of automating digital asset management while maintaining brand consistency across websites, marketplaces and devices. Sören Wrenn, CEO and cofounder, of TITLES described how platform allowing artists to license custom AI models trained on their work, earning royalties when their creative styles are used.

Despite these opportunities, panelists identified significant adoption barriers, including copyright concerns, legal uncertainty, brand reputation and organizational resistance. The discussion underscored AI’s potential to accelerate visual content production while highlighting the continuing importance of human judgment, authenticity and quality.

The “Visuals for Connection” panel examined how photography, artificial intelligence and digital platforms are creating new opportunities for sharing experiences and strengthening relationships; the discussion featured Andy Edwards of GeoSnapshot, Darin Myman of Picture Party by Myseum, Laurent Martin of MagicLabs and Canberk Sinangil, co-founder & CTO, of each::labs. Edwards described GeoSnapshot’s platform for distributing photographs through sporting events, schools and professional photographers. Operating in 140 countries, the platform emphasizes privacy, parental consent and secure image sharing. Picture Party presents an alternative to traditional social networks, offering private, encrypted spaces where families, organizations and event participants can exchange full-resolution photographs and videos.

Martin explained how MagicLabs combines AI technology with human designers to produce personalized photo books and children’s stories. These products can strengthen connections between children, parents and grandparents through customized narratives. each::labs demonstrated how its platform integrates more than 600 AI models, enabling applications ranging from animating historical photographs to virtual try-ons.

Privacy and authenticity emerged as recurring themes in the panel discussion, particularly regarding children’s photographs and AI-generated imagery. The discussion also highlighted opportunities for imaging businesses to move beyond photo storage and printing toward services that facilitate meaningful personal connections.

Speed insights

Attendee interviews

Andrew Laffoon, CEO and co-founder of Mixbook, talks about the imaging trends at the Visual 1st conference. (Hear our latest The Dead Pixels Society Podcast interview with Laffoon here.)

Luke Daffron, CTO of Miller’s Professional Imaging, describes the trends he say at the Visual 1st conference in San Francisco

Patrick Collet of the photo printing app Lumica, shares his impressions of the value of the Visual 1st conference. Here more about Lumica on our podcast interview with Collet here.

Visual 1st Awards

One of the highlights of the Visual 1st conference are the Show & Tell demos, where participants have four minutes (and four minutes only!) to demonstrate their imaging application. A panel of esteemed judges then select awards in four categories.s

Visual 1st Best of Show award: Sticker Camera

Before winning the Best of Show Award at Visual 1st, Gavin Zamanian and Miles Wiesenthal of Sticker Camera demoed the latest prototype of the camera to The Dead Pixels Society. “Even though we felt that Sticker Camera is still at the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage, we believe it has tremendous potential,” said Rudy Burger, founder & managing partner at Woodside Capital. “We were impressed by how these young entrepreneurs developed a device at an incredibly low cost point that is fun and engaging.”

Visual 1st Best Business Potential award: Imgix

“As an industry, we are all challenged by the need to deal with too many images that require too much storage,” said Eran Steinberg, co-founder & chairman at FotoNation. “Imgix has built a powerful imaging infrastructure that tackles these challenges head-on. We are very impressed by the 8 billion images they process daily as well as the 20 million websites they serve, which makes us believe Imgix has a truly scalable and a sustainable business.”

Visual 1st Best Technology award: Resemble.AI

“Considering the responsibility we all have in our industry, we believe full circle detection of deepfakes is an important problem to solve — which is exactly what Resemble AI showed us they’re focused on,” said Navin Sarma, AI Innovation and Research Product Lead, Google. “In particular, we liked how they demoed several important use cases, such as real time detection, and tooling and graphs to see more context of what was being detected. We’d love to see how robust it is for the really hard cases, but it definitely displayed promising technology that we all need in order to be really responsible with the work we do.”

Visual 1st Special Recognition award: LifeWeaver

“My first reaction was: no way, this is never going to work for someone like me! But it triggered my curiosity — can there really be loads of meaningful information hidden in my fragmented text feeds that can frame a deep and colorful timeline of my past?,” said Sami Niemi, paartner, Spintop Ventures. “I had to immediately test it by exporting my own SMSes into Claude Code and ask it to create an organized summary of the events in my life — I was stunned!  So… LifeWeaver is targeting a really interesting use case, especially when combining text with visual memories!”