ImageKit 2024 Recap | Transforming Media Processing and Delivery with AI and More

2024 has been an incredible year for ImageKit, filled with innovations and updates that make optimizing, transforming, and managing digital assets better than ever before.

Let’s look at what we did in 2024, how these updates can enhance your workflows, and what’s in store for 2025.

Image creation from text prompts using GenAI

One of our most exciting launches in 2024 was real-time AI-powered image creation. ImageKit is one of the first platforms to integrate GenAI-based image generation from text prompts directly into a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system and the image processing API.

Whether you're crafting visuals for blogs or creating new ad campaign creatives, it's as simple as typing a text prompt. ImageKit generates stunning images that you can use instantly on the web or store in the ImageKit Media Library for future use.

What makes it even better is the ability to combine these generated images with other ImageKit transformations. You can customize and adapt assets on the fly, creating ready-to-use visuals at scale—all with minimal effort.

Learn more about this feature →

Change image background with AI

Ever wanted to experiment with fresh product placements or lifestyle backdrops for your e-commerce store but hesitated due to the cost and effort of reshoots?

ImageKit's AI-powered background change makes this a thing of the past and allows brands to adapt visuals quickly, saving time, resources, and significant costs compared to traditional reshoots.

Using a simple URL-based transformation, you can specify the background using a text prompt. Our AI handles lighting, shadows, and other nuances to deliver realistic, studio-grade results.

Whether you're showcasing a sleek car, stylish shoes, or a kitchen appliance, the possibilities are endless.

Discover how it works →

Expand images to fit any aspect ratio with GenFill

Creating visuals that perfectly fit different platforms and devices' varying aspect ratio requirements can be challenging.

For example, you could have product images shot in a 1:1 aspect ratio for your website, but now you want to display them in a vertical 9:16 aspect ratio on mobile without cropping the image.

With ImageKit's GenFill transformation, you can now effortlessly adapt your images to meet platform-specific requirements while maintaining a professional and cohesive look — without having to do a re-shoot, with just a simple URL-based transformation parameter.

This feature is perfect for developers creating image experiences across platforms. While there are other tools to do a generative fill manually, one image at a time, ImageKit's ability to make this available as a URL parameter and then combine it with other image transformations helps save time at scale while ensuring their visuals align with platform specifications.

Upscale and retouch low-resolution images

Low-resolution or user-generated images are often grainy and do not meet the visual quality requirements for modern websites and marketing campaigns.

With ImageKit's upscaling and retouching capabilities, you can instantly enhance such images to increase their resolution and make them sharp, vibrant, and ready for use.

Whether you're working with older assets, user-submitted photos, or legacy content, this transformation ensures you never have to compromise on quality.

Remove background with AI

Consistency in product visuals is crucial for e-commerce and social media, and ImageKit's AI-powered background removal makes achieving this easier than ever.

For this transformation, you don't have to make API calls or store the removed background image somewhere. Just add a parameter e-removedotbg to the URL, and ImageKit does the rest.

You can remove an image's background for a clean, transparent look.
Or, replace it with a solid color to match your brand's requirements.

This feature is ideal for product photography, allowing you to quickly create professional, on-brand visuals for different marketplaces without extensive manual editing.

New URL-based image transformations

2024 brought a host of powerful new transformations to ImageKit. Here’s a quick summary:

Object-aware cropping: This feature extends upon Smart Crop's current automatic and face-crop ability to support cropping more than 80 named objects, including people, animals, food, vehicles, accessories, etc., through a URL transform.

Add shadows: We introduced two ways to add product shadows.
- A simpler shadow transformation to manually control the shadow's direction and intensity for images
- An advanced shadow transformation that uses AI to determine the perfect shadow based on the object's shape and lighting direction
Gradients: Add multi-color gradients directly from an image's URL, with control over direction and color stops. Combine gradients with other transformations to create polished banners for websites or apps.

These transformations work in real time, right from an image's URL. Unlike traditional tools that require processing images one at a time, ImageKit allows you to scale your creative production effortlessly, enabling faster and more efficient workflows.

Explore these transformations →

Styled video subtitles

With ImageKit's subtitle styling transformations, you can now customize fonts, colors, sizes, and effects to align with your brand's guidelines.

Whether you're creating educational videos, product tutorials, or social media content, styled subtitles make your videos accessible and engaging.

Integrations, SDKs, and updated documentation

We listened to our developer community and rolled out several new integrations and updates to enhance your development experience with ImageKit.io.

All SDKs got major updates introducing new transformations and exposing new APIs, features like upload policies, preprocessing, and more.
New Netlify and Next.js integrations to streamline image and video optimization, transformation, and uploads in your projects
Updated documentation: We refreshed the entire documentation from scratch, including better content and quick start guides for all frameworks, better AI-powered search, the option to try out API requests from within the docs, and more to make it easier than ever for you to get started.

AI-powered search in ImageKit DAM

Finding assets in a growing digital library can be challenging. That's why we introduced AI-powered search, designed to simplify and speed up asset discovery. And we made it available for free to every user of ImageKit DAM!

With this new search mode, you can:

Describe what you're looking for, like "a boy wearing a red t-shirt," and let the AI find the perfect visual match for your query.
Find visually similar assets in your library by uploading an image or using an existing one in the Media Library.
Use the search autocomplete to find assets quickly.

Integrate DAM with your favorite tools

This year, we launched the ImageKit DAM app for Mac and Windows, enabling seamless integration with your favorite tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Shopify, Magento, Hubspot, and more.

With this app, you can:

Drag and drop files directly into your workflow without switching between tabs or multiple downloads.
Easily find and use assets while staying focused on your creative tasks.
Enhance team productivity by eliminating repetitive actions like uploading and downloading files.

Whether you're a designer, marketer, or e-commerce team member, this native experience simplifies your creative workflows and keeps your projects moving efficiently.

Read more about the ImageKit DAM app →

Improved commenting and notifications in DAM

Collaboration in ImageKit's DAM has reached a new level with improved commenting and notifications designed to make sharing feedback more effective.

You can now leave contextual comments with rich-text formatting, pinpointing specific parts of images or frames in videos for precise, actionable feedback. The feedback is tied to specific asset versions, ensuring a clear context for discussions.

You can also mention other collaborators directly in a comment. They get notified via email and in the Notification Center inside the DAM, ensuring everyone is on the same page for a seamless creative process.

Once some feedback has been resolved, you can mark those comments as resolved, helping you focus on unresolved feedback.

Monitor activity with Media Library audit logs

For teams managing large media libraries, keeping track of changes is critical. With Media Library Audit Logs, administrators gain full visibility into who did what and when, providing valuable information for ensuring security, compliance, and accountability in larger teams.

You can now:

Monitor uploads, deletions, access changes, and more across the entire media library.
Filter specific events based on user, file path, date, or the type of action.
View asset-level history, including asset organization updates, access control changes, and more.

New DAM-only plans for growing businesses

We introduced affordable DAM-only plans for small and growing marketing and creative teams looking for an efficient way to manage digital assets.

These plans let you exclusively access ImageKit's powerful Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities, advanced search, and collaboration features at a price point that scales with your needs.

You get the best DAM features for your scale without paying a bomb or waiting months to realize RoI.

Explore these plans →

Enhanced embeddable Media Library widget

Integrating ImageKit's Media Library directly into your internal applications or CMS is a great productivity boost for teams. With the new update, we have made this integration using the embeddable widget even better:

You can open specific search views, folders, or collections that match the user's context instead of always starting at the home folder.
You can now control file selection format and count, making it easier for developers to restrict selections from the widget in different contexts.

Learn more about the Media Library Widget →

Improved Performance Center

We've revamped the Performance Center, leveraging Google Lighthouse to offer advanced insights into how images and videos impact your website's performance.

The performance center evaluates metrics like proper image sizing, lazy loading, use of modern formats, compression, and even video optimization.

It stores up to 90 days of data to help you assess the impact of design or technology changes on media performance, sends you weekly emails, and provides actionable tips to fix the issues that come up in the report.

Free media utility tools

This year, we introduced a suite of free media utility tools designed to make simple media management tasks easier for everyone. These tools include secure file hosting, format conversion, and image compression — all available without ads or hidden costs.

Perfect for individuals or teams, these utilities are ideal for quick, one-time media optimization and management operations, offering a secure and hassle-free experience.

And a lot more!

From webhook subscriptions to validation checks in the Upload API to the ability to extract thumbnails from PSDs, PDFs, and other files, we've rolled out several updates that make development and managing image and video-rich experiences even better.

Looking ahead

2024 has been a transformative year for ImageKit, and we're grateful to have shared it with you. As we look toward 2025, our commitment remains the same: empowering you with the best tools to optimize, transform, deliver, and manage your digital assets effortlessly at scale.

In the coming year, you can look forward to

Build better video experiences with a powerful video player with integrated analytics, automatic video transcription subtitles, AI-powered video trailers, smart crop, and more.
ImageKit DAM will see enhancements like AI-powered automation, moderation, and workflows, designed to simplify asset management. We’ll also introduce tools to gather insights from existing content in your repository, helping you make data-driven decisions. Additionally, improved search and asset organization capabilities will ensure your growing repository remains efficient and manageable as you scale, making it easier to find and organize digital assets seamlessly.
An advanced AI image editor within the DAM with features such as generative fill, change background, and more that will not only suggest AI-driven, contextually relevant editing suggestions and backgrounds but also allow complete customization through text prompts. It will set a new standard for intuitive and powerful image editing for your teams.
More integrations with tools in your workflow, security updates, SDK improvements, new sample applications, and free tools to help you use ImageKit better

Thank you for being part of our journey. Here's to more innovation, collaboration, and success together in the coming year! 🥂

ImageKit's 2024 Recap

Transforming media processing and delivery with AI and more!