SoftOrbits, a software development company that started as an image data management startup in 2006, has been ranked as one of the top 10 software companies by the International Society of Software Owners (OISV) for 2024, solidifying its leadership in the industry.
SoftOrbits is a well-recognized team behind several popular utilities like Photo Retoucher, Sketch Drawer, and PDF Logo Remover. It focuses on creating user-friendly, high-performance, and efficient digital photography tools that are popular with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide and get high ratings from industry professionals, including members of OISV, SWRUS, and ISDEF.
What is OISV and why is it so important?
The International Society of Software Owners (OISV) is an association that brings together leading software developers from around the world. The annual OISV ranking evaluates companies based on innovation, product quality, user support, and contribution to the industry. Being ranked in the top 10 is not just prestigious — it is also a testament to the company’s trustworthiness.
“OISV recognition is not just an award for us. It motivates our team to keep moving forward and create products that make users’ lives easier and more convenient,” comments Eugene Ustinenkov, CEO of SoftOrbits with more than 10 years of software development experience.
What makes SoftOrbits’ software successful?
The key to SoftOrbits’ success lies in its focus on developing and supporting a narrow range of products, mainly utilities for image editing and data recovery, tools for working with multimedia and programs for automating routine tasks.
This way, the team can minimize corporate expenses and direct maximum effort toward creating high-quality software. This well-established approach has proven itself multiple times and has enabled the company to achieve several millions of installations as well as hundreds of thousands of active users. However, that’s not the full extent of it: according to SoftOrbits’ internal surveys, over 95% of users rate the company’s products positively.
As Eugene Ustinenkov, the CEO of SoftOrbits with more than 16 years of experience in image data management explains, the team’s focus on user needs and commitment to providing the best user experience have made SoftOrbits the choice of millions.
“We always listen to user feedback. This allows us to not only improve existing products but also develop new tools that are genuinely in demand,” notes Hannes Jansen, content author and editor at SoftOrbits.
How SoftOrbits achieved international recognition
SoftOrbits began its journey in 2006 as a small team of enthusiasts developing software for home users. Even in its early years, the company’s products stood out for their user-friendly design and effectiveness.
In 2008 SoftOrbits launched some of the first image processing and data recovery utilities to date, including tools for restoring photos, videos, and other documents from flash drives, hard drives, and other storage devices. Additionally, the team has developed Picture Doctor, which repaired damaged photos and Adobe Photoshop projects retrieved from corrupted storage devices.
In 2010, SoftOrbits was the first to release tools for batch-removing date stamps, watermarks, logos, and text from photos and videos. This software was inspired by a personal necessity: after a trip to Bali, SoftOrbits’ CEO Eugene Ustinenkov couldn’t find a suitable tool to fix his own photos, so he decided to create it himself.
By 2012, the team had received some of its first awards, including Editorial Choice from Cnet and Softonic.
In 2018 the team expanded its range of digital photo editing products, focusing on both automatic and manual restoration of old photos through SoftOrbits Photo Retoucher. SoftOrbits also introduced photo converters supporting modern formats like HEIC and DNG and actively developed Android applications, including tools for photo editing and system optimization.
What’s next for SoftOrbits?
Inclusion in the OISV top 10 software companies is the latest major achievement in SoftOrbits’ lasting career, and the team already has major plans for the future.
“Being in the top 10 not only highlights the quality of our existing solutions but also sets a high standard for future projects. We see this as both a challenge and inspiration to achieve even more ambitious goals,” emphasizes Eugene Ustinenkov, CEO of SoftOrbits, Candidate of Technical Sciences.
With over a million software downloads in 2024, SoftOrbits is currently advancing the use of neural networks for photo and video processing, integrating them into seven of their products to provide automatic restoration of old and damaged photos, photo enhancement, color correction, and AI-powered photo editing using prompts. The team has also introduced intelligent text detection and removal features for both photos and videos.
Apart from that, SoftOrbits implements custom neural networks tailored to specific user tasks, planning to expand these services as SaaS offerings for a broader home user audience. For now, SaaS solutions are only available upon request from corporate clients.
Ready to explore opportunities with SoftOrbits? Contact the team at support@softorbits.com or visit softorbits.net.
