The company that brought you Photoshop now brings you stock photography, all via the Creative Cloud.
Adobe is paying almost a billion dollars for stock library Fotolia
Ever since it launched the Creative Cloud, Adobe has been striving to add value to the subscription service. Adobe wants the Creative Cloud to be more than just a delivery service for its flagship apps like Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC – it wants it to be a place where designers share and critique each other's work, as well as a marketplace to buy and sell design assets and services.
Central to the former goal was Adobe's purchase, two years ago, of designer portfolio network Behance. And today it's taken another big step towards the latter goal, with the announcement of its intention to acquire stock library Fotolia for around $800 million in cash.
Fotolia is well known within the design community for its TEN competitions
Fotolia, a source of photos, images, graphics and HD video that's well known within the design community for its TEN collection competitions, will now be integrated into the Creative Cloud. This will provide Adobe's subscribers with the ability to access and purchase over 34 million images and videos within the software.
It all ties in with Adobe's stated aim to "simplify and accelerate your design process" – a laudable aim which can also be read as 'never open a single window outside the Creative Cloud'.
The purchase will not affect Fotolia's current customers, as it will continue to run as a standalone stock library, accessible to all.
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Tom May is an award-winning journalist and editor specialising in design, photography and technology. Author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. Today, he is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq and its sister sites Digital Camera World, T3.com and Tech Radar. He also writes for Creative Boom and works on content marketing projects.
