Adobe Stock rises from the ashes of Fotolia

Adobe has officially announced Adobe Stock, a new stock image service that has been built on the Fotolia service that was purchased by Adobe in January this year. The new service opens its doors today, coinciding with the launch of the 2015 Creative Cloud update, which adds comprehensive Stock integration throughout Adobe’s most popular programs.

Launching a stock image service makes a lot of sense. According to Adobe, the market for stock images is estimated at $3 billion, and 80% of the creative types that buy stock images use Adobe tools. Now, Creative Cloud users will be able to search for a stock image from within Photoshop or InDesign, import it and edit an unlicensed, watermarked version. When they are happy with their edits and want to license the image, they can pay for it and their edits are automatically applied to the paid-for version.

There will be a standalone website, stock.adobe.com, for non-Creative Cloud members, but membership has its benefits; most notably a discount on bulk purchases. For non-members, Stock will have a flat fee of £5.99 per image, but you’ll be able to buy ten per month for £29.99 or 750 a month for £199.99. Members will get the option to sign up to the 10 image a month plan for £10 less, on top of their existing Creative Cloud plan. Unused images are carried over from month to month for up to a year on the 10 image plan.

Adobe says it has designed Stock for creators as well as consumers. It will be passing 33% of the final price of an image onto image creators, up from a typical 20-25% on most other stock image websites, and creators won’t be restricted to only selling their content through Stock – they will be able to add their content to other stock websites, and sell it directly as well.

Adobe Stock will arrive with over 40 million photos, illustrations and graphics, including those that were originally a part of the Fotolia service, in 13 languages and in 36 countries starting today.