Santa Pix, an AI-powered image editing app

Once upon a time, before “AI” was a word of the day, our team had been building advanced solutions in the area of image processing, powered by Machine Learning (ML) and AI (Artifical Intelligence). Today, we are introducing a Santa Pix project, an image editing and cropping app powered by ML. Santa Pix is designed for both iOS and Android users, enabling them to pick any image from their smartphone gallery and edit it on the spot. The platform offers hundreds of creative backgrounds to choose from, along with features for cropping images, adjusting colors and lighting, and making other minor enhancements. Notably, Santa Pix incorporates image cropping mechanics, which are supported by ML scripts for automated silhouette recognition and image segmentation. The app also offers a rich collection of free and paid custom backgrounds allowing mobile users to customize images to their heart’s content.

How we built it

The customer possessed a defined vision for their application, seeking assistance with its technical implementation. ABCloudz started off the project by designing a solution architecture, proceeding to implementation, testing and deployment to AppStore and Play Market. Our team’s previous experience in image processing, gained from projects such as Miniature You and AFPAS, proved to be highly advantageous for the project’s success.

To guarantee optimum performance and seamless compatibility across various mobile platforms, we opted for a native mobile development strategy. For the iOS version of the app, we employed Swift, and for the native Android version, we utilized Kotlin along with the Android SDK. To store custom templates in a secure and fully-managed location, we harnessed the power of cloud-based Firebase data storage. This integration seamlessly links with both the iOS and Android iterations of the app, ensuring a cohesive user experience.

To enhance the app’s capabilities, we seamlessly integrated a diverse range of image editing tools into both its iOS and Android versions. For instance, in the iOS version, we incorporated the power of Core Image, Apple’s native image processing and analytics solution. It receives an image from the Santa Pix application, runs it through its native filters, renders the images, and returns it to the application. This integration empowers iOS users with the ability to easily crop silhouettes and edit backgrounds in their selected images. To automate image segmentation, we integrated the app with ML scripts from the Image Segmentation Library for iOS from the Huawei Image Segmentation SDK. The app also integrates with a cloud-based Firebase storage as a source of custom templates. As long as some backgrounds offered by Santa Pix are paid, the application integrates with the Apple Pay billing client, which ensures in-app purchases. The architecture of the iOS application is illustrated in the image below.

In the Android version, OpenGL supports high-quality image rendering. Scripts from the ML Image Segmentation library for Android, taken from the Huawei Image Segmentation SDK, ensure automated image cropping and segmentation in the Android version of the app. The role of the Firebase data storage remains the same as in the iOS version, while the GPay billing client is responsible for in-app purchases. The architecture of the app’s Android version looks as follows:

Result: Photo editing app with ML-powered features

The Santa Pix is already deployed to Play Market and AppStore. By using our mobile development practices, we:

• Built stable and error-free versions of the application for both iOS and Android.
• Ensured flexibility and security of template storage with cloud technologies.
• Provided convenient user experience with automated silhouette recognition and image cropping assistance through ML scripts and native image processing integrations.
• Delivered a project in less than 3 months

Mobile development with ML and AI

The Santa Pix project not only demonstrates our team’s capability to build interactive and stylish mobile apps for iOS and Android, it also highlights unique expertise with ML and image processing. Reach out to us to talk about your software development needs and get mobile solutions implementing the newest AI and ML trends.