Hello Perfectly Clear community!
As I reflect on 2025, I am grateful for the trust of our customers, partners, and the talented team at Perfectly Clear. Together, we delivered technology that solves real challenges in imaging and helps our industry move forward.
In 2025, the imaging industry faced growing pressure for higher quality, faster turnaround, and more cost-efficient workflows. Automation and AI became foundational, not optional. End users expect authenticity and accuracy in every image, and you, our customer need to deliver this without slowing production or sacrificing integrity. We’re pleased to continue to be the only solution for 20 years that delivers Real Color Photography® – we take it so seriously that we have a trademark on it!
We also continued to hear a clear message from the market. People want more control, more engagement, and more “stickiness” in their capture and gift creation experiences. As a result we launched our Front End Tools. Our goal was simple. Deliver complex functionality in a way that is fast to implement and easy for users to adopt. Achieving implementation times of less than one day was a milestone for our team and for our customers.
AI Art and face swapping was another focus. The market is seeing broad access to consumer tools, yet enterprise customers are still navigating legal, privacy, and brand challenges. Turning a guest into a recognizable princess, superhero, farmer, pirate, anything you dream of actually – while keeping your face and skin tones real requires more than creativity. It demands a responsible and secure technical approach. It’s also important to give you more opportunities to monetize, which includes more pictures of our furry friends – here’s our yorkshire terrier – before, Perfectly Clear, with AI Art!
An interesting learning from Visual 1st, the premier imaging conference in San Francisco, discussed the market changes in print with Gen Z. Film prints are coming back as the game-changing generation wants more tangible keepsakes, and they’re looking for candid, real shots that take away from their composed and poised selves on social media. As they say, “it’s like a reward”, in respect for receiving their candid masterpieces.
Innovation is core to our DNA. From the day we began 24 years ago, we’ve been driven by a single purpose: to push the boundaries of what’s possible in image correction and enhancement. In the early days we asked what life saving information lies hidden within the x-ray and can we automatically increase diagnostics? We came up with a method to reveal the hidden details (Original on the left, Perfectly Clear on the right):
Our goal is to invent time-saving and revenue-driving solutions for you. To ensure we can innovate even further, we created a dedicated R&D and Innovation department this year led by Alina. This growing team of seven (and we’re hiring!) strengthens our ability to explore emerging technologies, validate new concepts, and develop solutions that do not yet exist in the market.
Fun fact – Nikita, one of our AI wizards, got married this year!
In addition to the above, we also launched several other AI-driven technologies that make a measurable impact in production environments:
AI Image Upscaling 2.0 – a new model focused on beautiful eyes and accurate facial features while removing noise and compression artifacts.
Glasses Glare Removal – automatically removing pesky glare from glasses, distracting from the subject
On-prem Background Removal – knocking out backgrounds without internet connection or bandwidth
Our roadmap is crafted with your needs in mind – thank you for sharing with us during the year. What else would you like to see? What are your current pain points? One of my pleasures is understanding how we can best help you and spending time understanding your needs.
People are our biggest asset. As an employee owned, bootstrapped company, we strive for operational excellence and re-deploy our cash back into R&D where over ⅔ of our people are focused. We’re very excited to have welcomed four new people to the team this year! Each person in the company is integral for scaling.
Kayla joined our team in January, is based in Calgary, and brings over five years of experience in all disciplines in marketing, branding and communications – a well-rounded rockstar. In her spare time, she enjoys trying new restaurants, running and relaxing.
Tanya is based in Russia and brings image quality expertise as we broaden our technology stack. She loves spending time with her children and travelling!
Timur has a background in quality assurance and technical support, and joins us as the QA and Tech Support Specialist. Outside of work, Timur is always upskilling, travelling and playing basketball.
Henning joins us to lead our sales team and brings 20 years of tech sales and marketing experience — built on a foundation of curiosity, grit, and a relentless drive to find opportunity in complexity. Outside of the office, he’s at home in the mountains or at his workbench building new things.
This year I had the special privilege of meeting with many of you in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Belgium, Rome, Milan, Mexico, Venice and various cities in the US, while my team was also in Brazil, Germany and cities in the UK!
It’s hard to believe, but we’re turning 25 years of age. We started with a vision and a dream in November 2001 and have come a long way.
Which is why I want to express my gratitude for your ongoing business and support. We’re a passionate and still relatively small team of 34 doing what we love. We exist because of you, for which I have never-ending gratitude, and something I never take for granted. To our customers, thank you for trusting us with mission-critical workflows. To our partners, thank you for helping us extend what is possible. And to our employees, thank you for your passion, ingenuity, and commitment to excellence.
Can’t wait to see what our 25th year of business will bring!
Please reach out to me anytime with your thoughts, suggestions or to chat about the industry, or to go for a cycle or hike, we’re here to help! This year I had the special privilege of cycling part of the tour de France route with a Brazilian customer, followed by navigating the roads of Amsterdam and making some summits in my backyard here in the Rocky Mountains with teammates (all enhanced with Perfectly Clear of course!):
