Adobe is giving away thousands of stock photos - here's why

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Adobe has started a new initiative to help democratize creativity, making 70,000 high-quality images and videos available for free. The new Adobe Stock free collection has been hand-curated by Adobe Stock artists and can be used for personal, business, or commercial projects.

“Stock content has long been a powerful tool for creatives,” Claude Alexandre, the VP of Adobe Stock, explained in a blog post. “Whether using it to jump-start projects, quickly visualise and pitch ideas and concepts, or combine licensed and original content into something new, creatives rely on stock to help them do more, faster. Today, it’s even more essential that content creators have access to sophisticated imagery, while considerations like shrinking budgets and the need for social distancing have made it extremely challenging to create original work.”

Within the new free collection, individuals can still make use of the usual search filters to help them find the content they need quickly. All of the images come with the same commercial licenses as Adobe’s paid assets, so users of the stock content can rest assured that artists are being fairly reimbursed for their content.

Democratizing art

At the same time, Adobe is launching a new Artist Development Fund to help encourage artists from underrepresented backgrounds. The fund will support 40 selected artists through a $500,000 investment that can be used to cover costs for equipment, artistic spaces and more.

Along similar lines, Adobe Stock has also announced eight themes focusing on intersectional narratives to serve as inspiration for these underrepresented communities. Upon assessing which artists will receive funding support, Adobe will look at the ability of each individual to authentically portray their own particular cultural identity.

Tying Adobe’s two new initiatives together, the software company confirmed that all content created through its Artist Development Fund would be made exclusively available through the Adobe Stock free collection for one year.

Barclay Ballard

Barclay has been writing about technology for a decade, starting out as a freelancer with ITProPortal covering everything from London’s start-up scene to comparisons of the best cloud storage services.  After that, he spent some time as the managing editor of an online outlet focusing on cloud computing, furthering his interest in virtualization, Big Data, and the Internet of Things.