When Adobe acquired Fotolia in 2014 for $800 million, it was obvious this was going to be a serious bet for the company. Adobe decided to enter into the stock image industry and managed to easily integrate Adobe Stock with their Creative Suite. This guarantees you will have a wide variety of images to use and easily import into your workflow. There’s only one catch: you’ll need to pay a $29.99 fee monthly. (check out the different plans).
So, is it worth paying $29.99 a month for Adobe Stock?
The monthly fee may not seem that appealing, but considering the many features offered, it’s definitely something worth looking at. Seriously. Go to stock.adobe.com and see for yourself. Type in anything you can think of and search for stock images. You’ll be amazed at the amount of high-quality photos that are available through this subscription.
One of the main benefits that Adobe Stock provides is the ability to easily find an image you like and then instantly import it across the different Creative Suite applications you already use (Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and others). When you see an image you like, you don’t need to buy it right away. You can test it out in your project to see if you like it. If you do, buy it, and Adobe will immediately update the image in your work removing the watermark and providing you the best quality image they have.
The seamless integration with Adobe’s other products can be seen in the image below. Let’s say you’re using Photoshop and need to look for a specific image. Just go to the File menu, where you can search for a stock photo within the program. You’ll be given a preview of the stock image in your project (with a watermark until purchase).
Integration with Adobe products is a huge time saver
But why should you pay $29.99 for Adobe Stock images when you have several different royalty-free websites where you can download images for no cost?
The answer is pretty simple, and all you need to do is make a quick search. Let’s say you want an image for a doctor’s office website. When you search the royalty-free websites, you’ll probably get around 10 or 20 results max. However, when you search within the Adobe Stock, you’ll get a much, much larger selection of images for the term (thousands to even millions sometimes). You’ll also be able to find images of much more obscure subjects. Plus, the images within Adobe Stock are not low quality, cheap stock photos. These are photos taken by professionals.
There are images for about everything you can think of.
Utilizing Adobe Stock for your website or business, and paying the fee of $29.99 is worth it. The amount of photos within Adobe Stock is nothing less than amazing. The images are curated, so you will never have to worry about low quality stock photos. The integration with Creative Suite programs make it a no-brainer if you’re already using Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, InDesign or any other Adobe product. Still on the fence about it? Check out the different plans, and get a free month trial.