Adobe Acquires Photo-Editing Platform Aviary
Aviary just announced that it has been acquired by Adobe. — Aviary offers a software development kit to developers who want to add photo-editing capabilities to their apps. Aviary has also created apps of its own, which it says have been …
Context & Ripple Effects
Aviary made its name not with flagship software but by licensing its photo-editing toolkit to other developers — it pushed onto iOS and turned its Windows Phone plugin into an app in 2012, making it one of the more widely embedded editing layers across mobile platforms.
For Adobe, the deal continues a string of acquisitions aimed at extending Creative Cloud beyond desktop tools: Auditude in 2011 for video advertising, [[Behance]] in 2012 for community features, and through 2014 a run of first-party mobile products including Sketch, Line, Photoshop Express, and the free iPad storytelling app released in May.
First-order effects
- Developers who embed the Aviary SDK in their apps now source that editing layer from Adobe, folding a third-party touchpoint directly into the Creative Cloud ecosystem.
- Aviary's own consumer editing applications join Adobe's growing stable of first-party mobile products alongside Sketch, Line, and Photoshop Express.
Second-order effects
- Competing mobile editing SDK vendors face a rival backed by Adobe's distribution and pricing power, pressuring them toward their own platform partnerships or exits.
- App publishers gain a new option to tie in-app editing to Adobe accounts and services, raising the bar for standalone editing utilities competing inside other people's apps.
Third-order effects
- The deal extends the pattern set by Auditude and Behance: Adobe buying the places where creative work happens — advertising infrastructure, portfolios, embedded tools — rather than just building desktop software, pulling the broader creative workflow toward Creative Cloud.
- If major creative-software vendors keep acquiring embedded toolkits, mobile platforms could consolidate around fewer, vendor-owned editing layers, squeezing independent SDK businesses out of the middle.
The trend: Creative-software vendors are consolidating the mobile editing layer through acquisition, with Adobe extending Creative Cloud from desktop tools into the SDKs and apps where everyday users edit photos.