Adobe shuttering in-house stock photo service

Adobe Creative Suite users will soon have to turn to other Web-based or local stock photography services to get their stock photo fix.

Adobe on Monday quietly announced the end of its stock photography service. The Stock Photos service has been a part of the popular Creative Suite since the introduction of Adobe Bridge in version 2. The cutoff date is March 31st, giving users a little less than two more months to use the service to acquire legal shots to use in design work.

According to Adobe's FAQ on the matter, the company is getting out of the stock photography business to "concentrate its efforts in other areas." The service acted as a go-between to other stock photography services without a markup. It's easily comparable to iTunes for stock photography, as it offered users a one-stop shop with live previews that could easily be put into Adobe's various design applications right after purchase.

Since the front end for the photo service is part of the Creative Suite software, Adobe's created a special uninstaller that gets rid of it in Bridge. Current users of Bridge are greeted to the below message, telling them how many days are left before the service cutoff, along with links to Adobe's customer service center.

To curb any latecomers, Adobe is also cutting off the search function of the stock photo tab on March 4, which will keep new users from even being able to get to the photos that are for sale.

In the past several years, the rise of Web services that offer stock photography has been speedy. With Bridge, it appeared that Adobe was taking notice and making it easier to parse through them.

However, between this and Adobe's foray into publishing to other stock services, killing off the intermediary (Stock Photos on Bridge) to save some hours to work on future products makes good business sense.