The lightbulb finally goes off as we at last discover why Adobe forked over a rumored $150 million in 2012 to acquire design portfolio site Behance. This week they quietly launched “Creative Cloud Market,” a service accessible directly through the Creative Cloud desktop app. This rather illuminating explanation comes to us courtesy of the official Adobe Behance blog:
“We’ve partnered with some of the most talented and experienced Creatives on Behance to create a library of ready to use, royalty-free assets that assist in the creative process…. Creative Cloud members can download up to 500 unique assets each month including PSD, ABR, TPL, JPEG and PNG files.”
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz17hTHQubY]
If there’s a charge for these “royalty-free assets” we haven’t come across it yet. While this may be great news for designers looking for a quick n’ free image, it’s pretty lousy news for the various stock image sites out there.
Also, do the Behance sources know that they’ve “partnered” with Adobe on this? It’s not so much that we mistrust Adobe per se, as we’ve seen other sites think nothing of borrowing their users’ photos for their own ends. It is the 21st century Wild West, after all, and we’re just keeping our eye on the chicken coop…
