Adobe acquires stock-art platform; Fotolia

With over 3.4 million members, Adobe Creative Cloud features the world’s leading desktop tools, an array of complementary mobile apps, training content, creative assets and services and ready access to a dynamic community. Creative Cloud is transforming how creatives find inspiration and deliver their best work.
Taking a step toward becoming a services company, Adobe has signed a deal to acquire Fotolia, a leading marketplace for royalty-free photos, images, graphics and HD video, for approximately $800 million. Acquiring Fotolia puts Adobe into direct competition with Shutterstock, Getty Images’ iStockphoto and other royalty-free licensing companies, but it could also make Adobe more influential as a supplier of content as well as the creative tools used to create that content.

Adobe plans to incorporate Fotolia’s stock image library into its Creative Cloud suite. This would give Creative Cloud members the ability to purchase and use Fotolia images and HD videos for the content they’re creating and sharing. Adobe believes that members will use Creative Cloud as the place to discover and buy great content — and also as a place where they can sell and showcase their work. In addition to incorporating this new acquisition into its Creative Cloud suite of services, Adobe will continue to operate Fotolia as a stand-alone resource for stock imagery.
The acquisition deal is aimed at enhancing the company’s Creative Cloud system. When it finalizes, it will be Adobe’s third largest acquisition, following the acquisition of Omniture in 2009 for $1.55 billion and Macromedia in 2005 for $3.15 billion.
Until the transaction closes, each company will continue to operate independently.  Upon close Fotolia CEO, Oleg Tscheltzoff, will continue to lead the Fotolia team as part of Adobe’s Digital Media business.