Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on December 12, 2014, 11:20
If Adobe get this right it could be a massive shake up for the whole industry.

fully agree and they should have tried better years ago.

Quote from: Zeus on December 11, 2014, 23:25
They pay $800 and own nothing but a distribution system.

right but I don't see a risk there once contributors will never leave or stop feeding microstock agencies (some might but more will join)

Quote from: Hobostocker on December 12, 2014, 11:43

Quote from: bunhill on December 12, 2014, 11:10
that they see their CC as being a marketplace.

why not adobe dealing with photographic assignments, photo jobs markets, all integrated into CC

They already have a job market on CC. No doubt there will be a tighter integration into CC over the next few years.

What makes this interesting is the huge amount of programming expertise Adobe has in house, something the other Stock houses don't have.

Quote from: vielleicht on December 12, 2014, 08:34
Photographers using cracked copies of LR/PS, tremble and fear!
They already have your ID, now they'll check the EXIF information and come and catch you.

I guess most of us professionals here have regular software licences, but what about some newbies/wannabe stock photographers?

I doubt they will do something like this. Would alienate lots of customers and is far too complicated of an issue in some cases. I outsource most of my post processing to freelancers.

Another interesting question as well is if they start to bundle the creative cloud at some point more tight with Fotolia that you get benefits being part of it or even have to subscribe to the cloud in order to submit and sell. Finally, Getty tries to integrate istock as well as much as possible into the getty landscape.

Quote from: Hobostocker on December 12, 2014, 06:22

Quote from: PixelBytes on December 12, 2014, 04:51
Hope those fair prices include fair payout to content producers.  Maybe they are smart enough to know that many of their client base are also stock contributors.

this is dependent on many many factors.

if we look at the adobe marketplace i never had the feeling they're in the business of selling stuff at the cheapest price possible like Walmart or SS and this because there's a sh-itload of money going on in DTP and Design, it's not a cheap industry and never will, Adobe itself is always praised as one of the best company to work for, with great salaries and all, again because they're making fat profits and can afford paying fair salaries.

will this apply also to stock ? we will see but it wouldn't make sense for them to keep Fotolia the way it's run now, Adobe has never been notorious for ripping off its suppliers, quite the opposite anyone dealing with them has been paid well as far as i know and the cottage industry around PS/LR plugins is a goldmine, no matter if Adobe could rewrite all those plug in-house or buyout NIK or Topaz.

This sounds good.  I hope they do make improvements.   If so, they may gain back so many people who left FT and took their images with them.

Quote from: Hobostocker on December 12, 2014, 11:44

Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on December 12, 2014, 11:20
If Adobe get this right it could be a massive shake up for the whole industry.

fully agree and they should have tried better years ago.

Then maybe stock will not 'eat itself' after all.

Nothing good will come from this.

Looks like Adobe has money they don't know what to do with.   

I guess my last thought is that they (Adobe) can't be bigger dickheads than the previous owners.

They paid $800,000,000/34,269,545=$23.34 per image to distribute. I am shocked.

Quote from: stockastic on December 12, 2014, 16:47
Looks like Adobe has money they don't know what to do with.

I disagree. It looks like a very deliberate investment which is about growing or ultimately maintaining the value of their subscription offering.

Adobe is always going to be looking to put back the day when the number of people subscribed to their cloud service peaks and begins to decline. And therefore they have to continually add value. Because the stock price is everything - and the stock holders will freak the day they announce that the number of subscribers has begun to decline. Though that market has a definite ceiling  (especially given the increasing use by business of social media and shared user content etc).

Depending how they do it, their marketplace vision has the potential to work both ways for them. Potentially people subscribing - and more important renewing - both to sell and to buy.

Have they bought DPC as well?

Has anyone noticed what is happening to Shutterstock stock prices this morning?  Completely tanking, down to roughly $60 per share as opposed to $70+ at closing last night.  Analysts are attributing this drop to the Adobe/Fotolia purchase.  Obviously some view this as a major hit to SS future sales.

Maybe you missed this one from March 2014?

Shutterstock (SSTK) is acquiring WebDAM, a developer of cloud-based software for managing and sharing images, videos, and other files. Terms are undisclosed.

Quote from: stock-will-eat-itself on December 12, 2014, 12:56
What makes this interesting is the huge amount of programming expertise Adobe has in house, something the other Stock houses don't have.

Quote from: w7lwi on December 12, 2014, 17:29
Has anyone noticed what is happening to Shutterstock stock prices this morning?  Completely tanking, down to roughly $60 per share as opposed to $70+ at closing last night.  Analysts are attributing this drop to the Adobe/Fotolia purchase.  Obviously some view this as a major hit to SS future sales.

Sure the deal will affect shares, but overall SSTK is way overvalued as is the whole US market.
With a ridiculous P/E of nearly 100, it will likely go below U$ 20 in the given time.

SS still has room to increase it's market share with IS fading, though.

The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

Quote from: Pauws99 on December 11, 2014, 21:25
Adobe buying photo marketplace Fotolia for $800M • 4:20 PM
Eric Jhonsa, SA News Editor
Along with its FQ4 beat, Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) announces it's buying Fotolio, a top marketplace for royalty-free photos and videos, for $800M in cash. The deal is expected to close in Q1 2015.
Fotolia, which competes against the likes of Shutterstock (NYSE:SSTK) and Getty Images, claims to offer 34M+ photos and videos for sale. Naturally, Adobe plans to integrate Fotolia with Creative Cloud, and offer its services to the Creative Cloud base.
The purchase follows Adobe's 2012 acquisition of digital artwork/portfolio-sharing site Behance, reportedly for ~$150M. More recently, Adobe launched a curated marketplace for Creative Cloud content (icons, vector graphics, etc.).
ADBE +5% AH.

Adobe Press Release


admin edit: added link and made the subject more descriptive

Quote from: Zeus on December 12, 2014, 16:47
I guess my last thought is that they (Adobe) can't be bigger dickheads than the previous owners.

They paid $800,000,000/34,269,545=$23.34 per image to distribute. I am shocked.

Ya, didn't they know they coulda just got a free API

Quote from: bunhill on December 11, 2014, 22:15

Quote from: cobalt on December 11, 2014, 21:57
what will the other players do now?

Well I've heard a rumour that the Gimp is planning to buy Dreamstime.

This could be in response to ACDsee introduction of layers. Adobe must have felt threatened.

Quote from: Zeus on December 12, 2014, 16:47
I guess my last thought is that they (Adobe) can't be bigger dickheads than the previous owners.

They paid $800,000,000/34,269,545=$23.34 per image to distribute. I am shocked.

Shocked, too. Didn´t they have seen there is the sub model, where you can buy the images from 0,16$   :-)

Interesting news.

Hopefully the current Fotolia management will be ditched. Not that Adobe is so much more trustworthy, but it can never get any worse than now.
However, let's not forget that Adobe has shown its real face with the greedy CC subscription model, which turned out to be much more expensive than off the shelf packages (let alone the inexplicable pricing difference between US-version and European versions).

Quote from: Noedelhap on December 12, 2014, 22:00
Interesting news.

Hopefully the current Fotolia management will be ditched. Not that Adobe is so much more trustworthy, but it can never get any worse than now.
However, let's not forget that Adobe has shown its real face with the greedy CC subscription model, which turned out to be much more expensive than off the shelf packages (let alone the inexplicable pricing difference between US-version and European versions).

Is it that greedy? I am pretty OK with it. What would Illustrator cost to buy outright, plus 2 annual updates say. (UK prices) £600 plus 2 x £120 for updates?
£820, divided by £17, my monthly cost, = 4 years worth of use for the same cost, plus saves me capital outlay initially. I like to keep my software up to date, makes me look on the ball to my clients. If you stick to an older version, the odds are when you need to upgrade to a newer mac, older software won't work anyway ( this is why I got a subscription in first place, and I am OK with it.)

Quote from: john_woodcock on December 12, 2014, 22:20
If you stick to an older version, the odds are when you need to upgrade to a newer mac, older software won't work anyway ( this is why I got a subscription in first place, and I am OK with it.)

A bigger issue or at least one that bites me more often is support for new cameras and new lenses.  Having the subscription means I have support for any new devices I buy.  That was a pain when I stayed on the same CS release; I had to download a trial for the later version and hope they didn't break compatibility between RAW and lens support and my old software.  Now I just let it upgrade and it's ready for whatever I throw at it.

If they add a # of images into the CC license will we be able to "buy" our own images? - that could be a mess, and if we aren't then you just need to team up with a buddy and swap...

In any case I'd love to see the worst of the greedy liars in charge of FT go away... I am not holding my breath waiting for improvements for the creators. There will probably be no big changes for a while anyway.

This deal is not unlike Autodesk buying Creative Market. Like Adobe, Autodesk is also in the process of trying to sell users of Max, Maya, etc on subscription/cloud deals. A trend it seems. It is not impossible that some corp could merge with SS in some kind of cloud play. (And if I were Canva I would be very afraid of a Photoshop with stock-image-search-and-buy built in.)

On the bright side, presumably Adobe will integrate a stock-image-search-and-buy functionality into Adobe Acrobat and Adobe's website creation software too. Also After Effects for videos. Those could result in more stock sales than from Illustrator or even Photoshop.

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on December 12, 2014, 10:28
Either way I give you three guesses as to which group ends up the losers in this horse trade 

On the Dark Side, prediction: Adobe will recruit Behance users to contribute stock images to its cloud subscription system, increasing our competition. Then Adobe will give the Behance contributors' images priority over ours, the way that SS created OFFSET and advertised it on the SS site to give favored priority to non-SS photographer/illustrators, while locking us out of the new store. Or the way IS has always given favored search engine placement and other special advantages to its pets.

Quote from: LesPalenik on December 12, 2014, 19:23
This could be in response to ACDsee introduction of layers.

as a poorman's DAM software AcdSee Pro 8 is great and i use it every day, it does many things you can't do with Lightroom, i would never use it for RAW editing but for each need you use the right tool.

Quote from: michaeldb on December 13, 2014, 02:15
Adobe will recruit Behance users to contribute stock images to its cloud subscription system, increasing our competition.

ultimately any digital thing should be available for sale online, there's no reason to keep it all in hundreds of different sites each one with different pricing and TOS.

why as a buyer you should be limited in your choice ?

the technology for storage, licencing, distribution, transmission, and online payments is up and running since more than 20 yrs now.

ideally, i should be able to buy just anything i see on screen and to do it with a couple clicks without being locked-in with this or that company or service.

sites like Alibaba.com are already showing what's possible at the moment and the sky is the limit.

Quote from: michaeldb on December 13, 2014, 02:15
Adobe will recruit Behance users to contribute stock images to its cloud subscription system, increasing our competition.

But nothing prevents us to submit to Behance too.
So everyone can submit more artistic images - or whatever they like - without the need of Stocksy or Offset's approval on what is art and what is stock.