If I Were Adobe

Adobe’s acquisition of Fotolia is expected to close in February (second half of Adobe’s fiscal Q1 2015). Assuming everything goes well the next question on the minds of everyone in the stock photo industry is what will Adobe do with Fotolia and how will that affect the rest of the players.

If I were Adobe, I would not try to integrate Fotolia into the company’s overall subscription strategy. I would not offer Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver subscribers use of a certain number of images for a slight increase in their monthly subscriptions.

Instead, I would tell Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver customers:

If you need photos or illustrations for you projects, now with one click you can search the 35 million-image Fotolia collection and easily import comp images into your Adobe program for preview purposes before purchasing an image. When you want to purchase you can complete the transaction through your Adobe account.

If you haven’t tried Fotolia previously you will find that they offer many of the exact same images that you will find on other stock photo sites, but at significantly lower cost. (See price comparison charts below.) If you have been using Shutterstock or iStock we urge you to try Fotolia. You may be pleasantly surprised at how much you can reduce your photo budget.

In addition, within each of the above programs there is now a Fotolia Visual Search (FVS) tool. If you find an image you would like to use on Shutterstock, iStock or anywhere else on Internet, make a copy of that image and drop the copy into FVS. If the image is available at Fotolia (highly likely) you’ll immediately be shown the image plus Fotolia Image Pack prices and the name of the creator. You’ll also be able to view other images in the creator’s portfolio or similar images from other creators.

Price Comparison

Since image pack sizes vary on each of these sites, there may be slight variations in these per-image prices depending on exactly how many images you need in what period of time.

Any File size

Pack Size	Fotolia	Shutterstock	iStock	iStock
			Non-exclusive	Exclusive
5 Images	$7.20 ea	$9.80 ea	$10.00 ea	$28.33 ea
25 Images	$5.60 ea	$9.16 ea	$9.58 ea	$28.75 ea

If all you need is a 1.9 MP or smaller file size

Pack Size	Fotolia	Shutterstock	iStock	iStock
			Non-exclusive	Exclusive
10 Images	$3.60 ea	$9.80 ea	$10.00 ea	$25.99 ea
50 Images	$2.80 ea	$9.16 ea	$8.66 ea	$24.99 ea

David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media, Adobe has said, “We’re now hard at work to radically simplify the buying and selling of stock content. Fotolia is helping Creative Cloud become the marketplace for creatives to buy and sell high-impact assets, find talent and promote their work in front of an influential global community.”