Adobe Creative Suite users will soon have to turn to other Web-based or local stock photography services to get their stock photo fix.
Adobe on Monday quietly announced the end of its stock photography service. The Stock Photos service has been a part of the popular Creative Suite since the introduction of Adobe Bridge in version 2. The cutoff date is March 31st, giving users a little less than two more months to use the service to acquire legal shots to use in design work.
According to Adobe's FAQ on the matter, the company is getting out of the stock photography business to "concentrate its efforts in other areas." The service acted as a go-between to other stock photography services without a markup. It's easily comparable to iTunes for stock photography, as it offered users a one-stop shop with live previews that could easily be put into Adobe's various design applications right after purchase.
Since the front end for the photo service is part of the Creative Suite software, Adobe's created a special uninstaller that gets rid of it in Bridge. Current users of Bridge are greeted to the below message, telling them how many days are left before the service cutoff, along with links to Adobe's customer service center.
To curb any latecomers, Adobe is also cutting off the search function of the stock photo tab on March 4, which will keep new users from even being able to get to the photos that are for sale.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
In the past several years, the rise of Web services that offer stock photography has been speedy. With Bridge, it appeared that Adobe was taking notice and making it easier to parse through them.
However, between this and Adobe's foray into publishing to other stock services, killing off the intermediary (Stock Photos on Bridge) to save some hours to work on future products makes good business sense.
Adobe is shipping the final two editions of its Creative Suite 3 today, rounding off the first updates to its digital design software since a merger with Macromedia less than two years ago. Both the Adobe CS3 Production Premium and Master Collection (more here) are available for purchase immediately online.
At $1,699, Production Premium CS3 includes upgrades of Premiere video editing and AfterEffects post-production software. In addition, the $2,499 Adobe Master Collection includes 17 applications that encompass the creation of film, video, audio, Web and mobile content. The Adobe CS3 applications run on Windows in addition to Intel-based and PowerPC-based Mac computers.
Adobe released on April 16 the Web and Design editions of CS3, which introduced new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and other applications. One day earlier, Apple rolled out its $1,299 Final Cut Studio 2 (review here) film-editing applications for Macs.
Adobe plans this week to update Photoshop's plug-in for importing and editing raw images from higher-end digital cameras, adding support for several new digital SLR cameras and improving noise-reduction and sharpening tools. Raw images are taken directly from a camera's image sensor without any in-camera processing, preserving more detail but requiring processing by a person into a more portable format such as JPEG; raw support is typically only available on higher-end cameras.
Adobe Photoshop CS3
(Credit: Adobe)But the new version 4.1 of the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in tool works only with Photoshop CS3, the San Jose, Calif.-based company's brand-new version of the image-editing software. Those with the earlier CS2 version must use version 3.7, said Tom Hogarty, Photoshop Lightroom product manager, or upgrade to the newer version of Photoshop.
And though the company announced Monday the plug-in was available on the company's Web site immediately, it said on Tuesday there was a "slight delay" and that the software would arrive by the end of the week.
Among the newer cameras the new raw plug-in supports are the Canon EOS-1D Mark III, Fuji FinePix S5 Pro, Nikon D40x, Olympus E-410, Olympus SP-550 UZ and the Sigma SD14.
In addition, the upgrade supports many higher-end medium- and large-format camera backs from Phase One: the H 20, H 25, P 20, P 21, P 25, P 30 and P 45.
Adobe said it would support the new camera and camera backs in an update of Adobe Lightroom due in the "near future."
Adobe would prefer to replace the scads of raw camera formats with its own Digital Negative specification, called DNG. Pentax's newer high-end K10D SLR supports DNG, and Adobe offers free software that can convert raw files it supports into DNG files.
BOSTON--Adobe Systems sees the so-called YouTube generation as its next big customer base.
At the JPMorgan Technology Conference here on Tuesday, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen explained how his company sees the market for its line of Creative Suite 3 software packages.
While Adobe has traditionally considered its base to comprise about 3 million professionals who return for each new software edition and continue to buy other Adobe products, that base is skewing toward nonprofessionals.
Chizen said his company estimates that there are about 38 million "aspiring professionals or amateur users" who want to be able to say they use what the pros use. They are now buying Adobe's lower-end packages. He cited several examples of young family members and friends who have suddenly become interested in getting "freebies." He contends that Adobe software is the new cool thing to have among the Web 2.0 set.
"Because of the social sites and sites like YouTube, everyone wants to create stuff that looks cool," Chizen said.
Chizen was pressed with questions from analysts on the price differences between Creative Suite 3 and Creative Suite 2 products. He initially said that because of CS3's new features and configurations, the comparison is akin to that of apples to oranges, but then he decided to answer the question.
"We still have lower price SKUs 'cause we don't want to alienate the 38 million-plus noncreative professionals. We have a lot of customer loyalty. We know customers will pay more, but we don't want them hating us 'cause we know that that will come back to haunt us," Chizen said. "I don't want our customers to have a perception of Adobe like the perception some have with Microsoft--like they're being held hostage."
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