Adobe acquires Aviary to enable creative cloud app development

Adobe today announced that it has acquired privately held Aviary, a developer of mobile SDKs (Software Development Kits) for the delivery of creative apps.

With millions of people already using Aviary-powered photo-editing apps and thousands of developers using Aviary’s SDKs, across mobile platforms, the acquisition accelerates Adobe’s strategy to make Creative Cloud a vibrant platform for third-party apps, through a new Creative SDK.

Currently under development, Adobe Creative SDK is a software library that enables developers to tap into Adobe’s creative technologies to build mobile apps and drive new connections between mobile devices and Adobe Creative Cloud desktop applications and services.

“We're excited to join Adobe and tap into their incredible wealth of creative technology and supercharge our collective SDK offering. Together, we will help nurture the next generation of third party creative apps.”

“Aviary has an exceptional team and technology platform, as well as expertise serving a robust developer ecosystem. We're thrilled to leverage Aviary's technology to make our Creative SDK even more powerful for app developers,” said Scott Belsky, vice president of Creative Cloud Ecosystem & Behance at Adobe. “This is great news for developers because thousands of mobile apps will have the opportunity to become compatible with industry-defining desktop tools like Photoshop CC, as well as new Creative Cloud services."

Adobe Creative SDK gives third-party developers access to Adobe APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), previously only available to Adobe’s internal engineering teams. Examples include: browsing files stored in Creative Cloud; extracting elements from PSD files; Adobe’s “Touch Slide” software for straight-line drawing; and cloud image-editing services like Content-Aware Fill and Upright. Adobe Photoshop Mix, a recently launched mobile app for iOS, utilizes these new APIs and offers some of Adobe’s best imaging technology for applying Photoshop looks and compositing images. Adobe Creative SDK is currently being tested by developers and a beta launch is expected in the coming months.

"Aviary was founded to bring creative freedom to the world,” said Avi Muchnick, Aviary’s co-founder. “We're excited to join Adobe and tap into their incredible wealth of creative technology and supercharge our collective SDK offering. Together, we will help nurture the next generation of third party creative apps.”