Adobe picks up photo-editing platform Aviary for Creative Cloud
Adobe's cloud-based palette for designers and developers continues to flourish, now expanding with the intended acquisition of Aviary.
Founded in 2007 and based in New York City, Aviary offers a photo-editing platform and a free SDK equipping developers with a customizable photo editor that can be embedded into iOS, Android, Windows and HTML5 apps.
Adobe plans to bake Aviary into the Creative Cloud, churning out a new "Creative SDK" intended to be more friendly with third-party apps.
Already under development, the Adobe Creative SDK will consist of a software library set up to form the foundation for these third-party mobile apps while also tying data and content back to Adobe's flagship Creative Cloud software suite.
Aviary CEO Tobias Peggs also hinted in a blog post on Monday at a collaboration with another Adobe unit, Behance, an online social media platform for creative professionals acquired by Adobe in 2012.
Peggs wrote:
Aviary's HQ in New York City is very close to the offices of Behance, the creative community that joined Adobe 18 months ago – and that is now a cornerstone of Adobe's Creative Cloud offering. Over the last year, we've gotten to know Behance co-founder Scott Belsky, who now serves as Adobe's VP of Products and Community. Scott and Govind Balakrishnan, Adobe's VP of Product Development for the Creative Cloud Ecosystem, have been driving an initiative to extend Adobe technology to third-party creative applications — an effort that manifested itself in June when Adobe launched its Creative SDK in private beta. As we all talked (and talked, and talked…), it became obvious that we shared a strong vision for mobile creativity.
Belsky followed up in a separate statement, positing that the merger should be seen as "great news for developers because thousands of mobile apps will have the opportunity to become compatible with industry-defining desktop tools like Photoshop CC, as well as new Creative Cloud services."
Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Creative Cloud continues to be a formidable (and bankable) cornerstone for the software giant's long-term revenue strategy.
In its third quarter earnings report published last week, Adobe boasted acceleration for Creative Cloud as well as Marketing Cloud adoption.
The San Jose-headquartered firm ended the quarter with more than 2.81 million paid Creative Cloud subscriptions, up 502,000 from last quarter.
At the time, CEO Shantanu Narayen outlined Adobe plans to fuel Creative Cloud growth further through three primary methods: aggressively convert more desktop Adobe software customers to Creative Cloud, target new customers with tailored offerings (i.e., Creative Cloud for photographers, etc.), and add more mission critical services (i.e., mobile apps built on Adobe's SDK).