Big Canvas Inc.

PhotoCanvas is a comprehensive photo/image editing tool that allows iPhone/iPod touch users to enrich their “visual communications” by adding background, frames, clip-arts and various drawings to their photos. It even allows users to “blend” multiple photos to have unique effects. 

As we mentioned on our Company Vision page, we believe that the wave of CGM (consumer generated media) we see on Youtube or Flickr today is just a tip of iceberg of this fundamental change in people’s life style. With always-connected lifestyle enabled by true “mobile computers” (iPhone is the very first one, of course!), we are going to see an explosion of creative expressions by millions of regular users. 

After observing tens of thousands of PhotoShare users (who are “early adaptors” of this always-connected lifestyle), we concluded that the number of people who edit their photos on mobile devices will eventually exceed the number of PhotoShop users on PC/Mac. PhotoCanvas is our attempt to position ourselves as a serious contender of this innovation. 

When I mentioned this vision to people, many people, especially heavy PhotoShop users, say “That is not possible. You never be able to build a rich tool like PhotoShop on iPhone. You never be able to replace PhotoShop”. They are right in the sense that it is not possible to make PhotoCanvas as feature-rich as PhotoShop, but they are missing a very important point – the value of always-connected lifestyle. We are not trying to replace PhotoShop. We are trying to reach people who want to get the benefits of PhotoShop, but want to get that benefits more casually and more conveniently. 

Imagine a case where a mother is watching a soccer game his son is playing in Seattle, while her husband is stuck in a meeting in New York. I think it is much more valuable for them to share photos in real time – taking photos with iPhone, personalize it with photo editing software on iPhone and share them via online service directly uploading them from iPhone, while their son is playing the game – than taking photos with fancy digital camera, loading them to PC/Mac when she comes back home, and editing them with PhotoShop, and sending via e-mail. 

This is why we believe iPhone+PhotoCanvas+PhotoShare is much more valuable to many users than Digital Camera+ PC/MAC+PhotoShop+Flickr. That’s why I believe the number of people who edit their photos on mobile devices will eventually exceed the number of PhotoShop users. It may take more than a couple of years, but I am so sure that it will happen eventually. 

Here are some images created by our users. They are creative, aren’t they?