PicsArt Photo Studio

PicsArt is a photographer editing, collage and drawing application and a social network. PicsArt enables users to take and edit pictures, draw with layers, and share their images with the PicsArt community and on other networks like Facebook and Instagram. The app is available on iOS, Android, and Windows mobile devices.^[1] It is also available on PCs running Windows 8.1 or higher.^[2]

History

2011: PicsArt was launched in November 2011 on Android devices.^[3] It was founded by Hovhannes Avoyan and Artavazd Mehrabyan.^[4]

2012: The app was downloaded 35 million times during its first year.^[5]

2013: PicsArt for iOS was released in January 2013 for the iPhone.^[6] In May of the same year, it was released for the iPad.^[7] The app had nearly 2 million unique daily users and 4 million registered users by January 2013.^[8] In November 2013, two years after its launch, PicsArt had reached 90 million installs and had nearly 25 million monthly active users. In December 2013, PicsArt became available for Windows Phone devices.^[9]

2014: In January 2014, PicsArt became available on devices supporting Windows 8. By March, the app reached 100 million installs on Android, 30 million active users, 60,000 images uploaded every day, and had a community of over 11 million users. In June 2014, PicsArt was released for all Windows 8.1 PCs, devices, and tablets.^[10] When the app celebrated its three-year anniversary, it had 175 million installs, 50 million monthly users, and had 18.5 million users in the social network.^[11]

2015: PicsArt reached 65 million monthly active users and 250 million installs.

2016: PicsArt reached 75 million monthly active users and 300 million installs.^[12] It continued to introduce new features including a remix galleries,^[13] a redesigned camera,^[14] personalization features and other improvements across iOS, Android and Windows devices.

Features and Tools

Photo Editor

The photo editor has a variety of different filters and photo effects. Its more advanced photo editing tools include a series of crop tools, a perspective adjustment tool, clone tool, motion tool, stretch tool, curves tool, adjust tool, enhance tool, and a tilt shift tool. Users can also add masks (including bokeh masks), stickers, frames and text. Users can also use clip art, which can be downloaded from the PicsArt Shop in the app. Users can also combine multiple photos into one to create double exposures.

Drawing Tools

The draw feature allows users to create digital illustrations using layers. The app comes with a variety of customizable brushes.

Collage Maker

Users can create collages using different backgrounds, customizable templates, or collage frames that can be downloaded from the in-app PicsArt Shop.

Community

#FreeToEdit

If a user wants to invite other users to download and edit one of their images, they can tag their image with the hashtag #FreeToEdit. Images tagged with #FreeToEdit can be downloaded by any community member for editing.

Contests

PicsArt hosts a series of weekly contests. The Weekly Art Project (#wap) focuses on different photo editing techniques using the app. The Weekly Photo Project (#wpp) focuses on different photography subjects and techniques. The Weekly Drawing Project (#wdp) gives users a subject and asks them to use the app's drawing tools to create digital illustrations. PicsArt also hosts a #FreeToEdit contest, where they promote a specific user's image that has been tagged as #FreeToEdit and ask the community to edit the image directly or use it in their own edits.

References