Learn how we build our systems and engineering organizations https://tech.shutterstock.com Here’s a tutorial that walks you through a simple scenario of setting up a free Shutterstock account and writing a Node.JS application to use the computer vision (CV) features of the Shutterstock API. You’ll use the API to search for images and then upload pictures of your own to use... Mon, 13 Jul 2020 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2020/07/13/computer-vision-tutorial https://tech.shutterstock.com/2020/07/13/computer-vision-tutorial We use some powerful search technology to get customers to the media that they want, and a lot of that runs under the covers. However, we’re now making some of our computer vision-based search tools available to all users of our API so you can try them out with no... Mon, 23 Mar 2020 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2020/03/23/computer-vision https://tech.shutterstock.com/2020/03/23/computer-vision Now that we offer API-specific subscriptions, you can get straightforward access to our media library from almost any programming language or client. These subscriptions include API access, so you can get started using our media in your applications in just a few minutes. There’s even a free option if you... Thu, 09 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/05/09/licensing-with-shutterstock-api-subscriptions https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/05/09/licensing-with-shutterstock-api-subscriptions An Introduction to Image Filtering Concepts with Shutterstock Editor - Shutterstock Editor is the easy design app for creating professional-looking content for social media, presentations and more. Image filtering is a crucial feature for any image-based design tool, and Shutterstock Editor provides robust support for it. This post outlines how we provide performant filtering within the constraints of various browser... Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/04/30/canvas-webgl-filtering-concepts https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/04/30/canvas-webgl-filtering-concepts Today the Shutterstock Developer Platform team is excited to release an updated JavaScript SDK for Shutterstock’s API. The SDK includes methods for all endpoints in the API, so you can do anything with the SDK that you can do with the API by itself, like searching and downloading media. We’ve... Tue, 09 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/04/09/reduce-integration-time-javascript-sdk-shutterstock-api https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/04/09/reduce-integration-time-javascript-sdk-shutterstock-api Estimating work accurately is probably one of the most challenging skills for software engineers to master and perform through their careers. As such, how agile engineering teams assign points to their sprint backlogs is a subject of ongoing debate that traces its roots all the way back to the beginnings... Tue, 02 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/04/02/demystify-story-points https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/04/02/demystify-story-points The business world has been buzzing from the phrase “Big Data” for years. Marketing around the term makes it seem like a magical phrase that can solve any problem just as long as we have enough data. However, even though we can store petabytes of data, it does us little... Tue, 19 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/03/19/data-visualization-essentials https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/03/19/data-visualization-essentials How We Scale Sprint Demos Globally - One of my earliest memories at Shutterstock is sitting with 60 people crammed into a 20-person meeting room and one developer presenting what they released that sprint. I’ve forgotten what that demo was about now, but clearly recall that everyone applauded at the end. In that moment, the unmistakable enthusiasm,... Tue, 12 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/03/12/shutterstock-sprint-demo https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/03/12/shutterstock-sprint-demo Building a Brick Grid in React - I work on the Search team here at Shutterstock. This team is responsible for building all the user experiences related to search—most notably, the image/video search results page, the asset details page (which you see when you click an image on the search results page), and so on. One of... Tue, 05 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0500 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/03/05/building-a-brick-grid-in-react https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/03/05/building-a-brick-grid-in-react A JavaScript Driver for the Amazon Neptune Graph database - We recently open-sourced an extension of Apache’s TinkerPop JavaScript driver compatible with Amazon’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) database authentication. We implemented a robust and scalable solution using Amazon’s Neptune graph database and Node-based API to support the Editorial business. However, we faced a challenge when it became evident that... Tue, 15 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/01/15/gremlin-aws-sigv4 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/01/15/gremlin-aws-sigv4 API reference information isn’t always given much attention in development processes. Teams often generate reference for commands or endpoints and assume that this is enough for developers to consume their API. However, we know that complete API reference includes much more information than just a list of commands or endpoints.... Tue, 08 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/01/08/building-api-reference https://tech.shutterstock.com/2019/01/08/building-api-reference Generate Meaningful Org Charts from Workday - tl;dr: Does your company use Workday? Ever wish you could see your company’s entire org chart in a single view? You can use OpenTree to fill this gap. Background We use Workday at Shutterstock and it serves as one of the key sources of employee data within our company. Though... Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 -0500 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/12/11/opentree-visualizing-organizations https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/12/11/opentree-visualizing-organizations Lots of people are familiar with downloading Shutterstock images directly from shutterstock.com to use in marketing, advertising, and news content. What most of our small and medium-sized customers don’t know is that when they search for images or download images from the website, they’re using the same computer interface that... Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/11/27/downloading-shutterstock-images-with-the-rest-api https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/11/27/downloading-shutterstock-images-with-the-rest-api Introduction At Shutterstock, we continuously work to add new features and improve functionality of our website for our users. In order to keep up with the rapid pace of development without compromising quality, we need to have a solid testing toolkit that allows developers to test the front-end application in... Tue, 13 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/11/13/integration-testing-for-front-end-applications https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/11/13/integration-testing-for-front-end-applications Sometimes it’s the little things that make working with a software tool effortless, like editors that have smart auto-complete and programs that provide precise error messages that help you work through problems. In my first year at Shutterstock, I’ve had to set up some technical documentation systems from scratch, and... Mon, 05 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/11/05/gitbook-plugin-related-links https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/11/05/gitbook-plugin-related-links Becoming Grapheme Cluster Aware - While Shutterstock supports 21 languages, our image editing tool, Shutterstock Editor, initially launched in English only. In order to deliver the same quality of experience for all 21 languages on Shutterstock Editor, we needed to make adjustments to how the tool handled characters in those languages. Shutterstock Editor uses Fabric.js... Tue, 30 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/10/30/improving-multilingual-text-support-in-shutterstock-editor https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/10/30/improving-multilingual-text-support-in-shutterstock-editor Individual Contributor and Management Tracks (Re)defined - Clear definition of levels and active enablement of individual career development are cornerstones of healthy, high-performing, highly-engaged engineering organizations. At any given point in time, it is important for engineers and managers of engineers to comprehend where they stand, the possible paths before them, and the specific behaviors and impact... Tue, 16 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/10/16/engineering-career-tracks-at-shutterstock https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/10/16/engineering-career-tracks-at-shutterstock Shutterstock turned 15 this year and anniversaries like this give us an opportunity to reflect back on (and appreciate) how far we’ve come and where we’re going. From our origins as a bootstrapped startup to Shutterstock today, we’ve achieved milestones that I had never imagined possible at the outset, for... Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/10/10/tech-blog-relaunch https://tech.shutterstock.com/2018/10/10/tech-blog-relaunch In Part 1, we discussed how using joint embeddings to rank images can help address the cold start problem. We showed that the joint embedding ranker exposes more new images than our existing ranker. This difference was even more pronounced for popular queries, where our existing ranker tends to favor... Thu, 13 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2017/04/13/image-search-using-joint-embeddings-part-two https://tech.shutterstock.com/2017/04/13/image-search-using-joint-embeddings-part-two On the Shutterstock search team, our focus is serving the best possible images for a given query. To do this, we use behavioral data from our customers such as downloads to help us rank the quality of an image for a given search. While this approach often works very well... Wed, 08 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0500 https://tech.shutterstock.com/2017/03/08/image-search-using-joint-embeddings-part-one https://tech.shutterstock.com/2017/03/08/image-search-using-joint-embeddings-part-one