Adobe Now Supplies Terrible Stock Images Right In Photoshop.
Adobe Systems has ventured into the stock images market, launching both a service that integrates with its cloud-based Creative Cloud tools, and a standalone stock images marketplace with 40 million curated and royalty-free images. Adobe users from today have access to 40 million stock images for use in their creations in a move that could shake up the $4bn global stock image market.If you’re in the habit of using Shutterstock to find terrible filler photos, there’s a new option: Adobe Stock, a 40 million-strong stock image library from the same people who make Photoshop.This year’s annual update of Adobe’s Creative Cloud set of applications—which includes professional design, photo, and video standards like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro—is more about a new service called Stock than the applications themselves.
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jun 16, 2015 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Adobe ADBE, -1.20% today launched Adobe Stock, the industry’s first stock content service to be integrated directly into the content creation process and the tools creatives use every day. The 2015 release of Creative Cloud includes major updates to Adobe’s industry-defining desktop tools, including Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and InDesign CC; as well as new connected mobile apps for iOS and Android. To be sure, there are plenty of new features, and even a new mobile app called Hue for video professionals to match their videos’ color grading to the colors in scenes shot with their iPhones. Available through Adobe Creative Cloud, this new service radically simplifies buying and using stock content, including photos, illustrations and graphics. “Adobe Stock extends Creative Cloud’s value as a vibrant global marketplace,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media, Adobe. “Eighty-five percent of customers who purchase stock images use Adobe creative tools.
Following Adobe’s pricing trend of subscriptions rather than one-off payments, Stock is mostly centered around monthly payment options: 10 images a month for $50, or 750 a month for $200. Adobe Stock, which emerged from Adobe’s January acquisition of Fotolia, is a repository of over 40 million images, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. At the same time, our customers – the best photographers and designers on the planet – will have the opportunity to contribute millions of new photos and images to Adobe Stock. Adobe Stock, our brand new stock service, makes 40 million photos, vector graphics and illustrations accessible directly within your favorite CC desktop apps.
That’s pretty steep, although if you’re an existing Creative Cloud subscriber (even to the $10-a-month Photography plan), that 10-images-a-month option runs just $30. Designers can launch Adobe Stock directly within CC desktop software, add watermarked images to their Creative Cloud Libraries, and then access and work with images across multiple desktop tools.
The images business is an offshoot of the company’s US$800 million acquisition in January this year of privately-held Fotolia, a marketplace for stock content. Morris said that 85 percent of people buying stock services are using Adobe software, and over 90 percent of the stock was created using Adobe tools. “We’re going to raise the bar for what people expect from a stock service,” said Adobe’s senior marketing director for Creative Cloud, Scott Morris.
Adobe said at the time that the acquisition would give Creative Cloud members the ability to access and purchase Fotolia’s over 34 million images and videos, assisting in the design process. If you do go on to pay for an image, any tweaks you made to the watermarked version, such as filters, get automatically applied to the for-pay version. A standard photography subscription to Photoshop and Lightroom and their web apps will cost $9.99 per month, a single app subscription is $19.99 per month, and a Creative Cloud subscription to all desktop and mobile apps will cost $49.99.
After Effects CC now has Uninterrupted Preview to allow artists to adjust a composition’s properties and even resize panels without impacting playback. Australian pricing is AU$11.99 for a single image; AU$35.99 per month for 10 images monthly (with rollover of up to 120 images); and AU$239.99 per month for 750 images for CC members on an annual plan. Adobe has been working on its cloud infrastructure for several years to enable syncing of content and settings among its desktop and ancillary mobile apps.
Also, the groundbreaking Adobe Character Animator brings 2D figures to life using a webcam to track facial movements, record dialog and apply movements in real time onto a pre-configured character. It’s also looking into building image-submission tools directly into Photoshop and other apps, which could make selling stock art nearly as easy as buying it. In the case of web pages, they can import finished designs into Dreamweaver; Device preview: Designers can link phones and tablets to a notebook running Photoshop either by cable or wirelessly and see in real-time how the design they are developing looks on those devices; A new haze tool in Photoshop that removes smoke, fog and underwater haziness from photos. It seeks to preserve highlights and natural whites but of course can only be useful where the photo has captured underlying detail; In Premier Pro there are now morph cuts.
The software will interpolate footage between the end of, say, a person talking and where they begin again — in a way that seeks to make any cut undetectable; A new tool called Animator lets a designer create a cartoon figure and then animate it with their own movements made in front of a webcam. Dreamweaver CC has new responsive web design capabilities that let designers quickly lay out and build production-ready sites that adapt to any screen size.
Whether it’s finding a standout image of a Scottish castle for a tourist brochure; a beach volleyball game for a sports web site; or an illustration of a restaurant menu for a mobile app, Adobe Stock has a huge selection of possibilities. Since Creative Cloud was introduced in 2012, Adobe has championed the idea that mobile devices should be integral to the creative process, with free companion mobile apps working seamlessly with CC desktop tools. Adobe also plans to add new stock content categories in the coming months, leveraging Adobe customers’ unrivalled reach and experience across creative fields. Adobe today released Brush CC, Shape CC, Color CC and Photoshop Mix on Android for the first time, bringing connected mobile workflows to millions of creatives worldwide. Premiere Pro gets “dramatically” simplified color workflows, smooth jump cuts, interruption-free preview, and a cool-sounding animation feature that lets you move 2D characters using your webcam.
A first for the stock image industry, creatives who sign up for a 10-images-per-month plan can “rollover” unused images for up to a year (most month-to-month stock subscription plans require creatives to use all images each month or lose them). New features for Enterprise, Education, and Government customers include two new security features, letting them manage their own encryption keys and host their own storage. This edition includes all the product features from today’s Creative Cloud 2015 release, plus expanded security options and deep connections with Adobe Digital Publishing Solution (DPS) and Adobe Marketing Cloud.
Creative Cloud for enterprise also supports an upcoming release of DPS, empowering existing teams in organizations to rapidly design and publish mobile apps without writing code. When adding Adobe Stock to any paid yearly Creative Cloud membership plan, creatives can save up to 40 percent over purchasing stock content separately.