Adobe buys photo editing startup Aviary

Adobe has acquired popular photo-editing toolkit Aviary for an undisclosed amount, the companies announced today.

Aviary provides developers (and outside companies like Yahoo) with a set of photo-editing tools they can build into their own apps, and that’s exactly why Adobe wants it. “The acquisition accelerates Adobe’s strategy to make Creative Cloud a vibrant platform for third party apps, through a new Creative SDK,” Adobe’s press release states.

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Adobe’s new Creative SDK (Software Developers’ Kit) provides access to Creative Cloud APIs, enabling developers to add features to their apps such as accessing files stored in Creative Cloud, pulling elements out of Photoshop files, and applying image-editing tools from the cloud. It’s currently under development, and Adobe plans to offer a beta version in the next few months, it stated. The addition of Aviary will give the company additional tools that it can add to that SDK, as well as the ability to reach many iOS and Android developers already using Aviary’s toolkit.

Aviary’s tools have become quite important when it comes to editing images on other services, and Aviary has seen 10 billion photos processed through the service last year alone, as VentureBeat reported back in April. In addition to a toolkit for developers, Aviary also offers a popular iOS and Android app for editing photos, also called Aviary.

Aviary will continue operations as usual for now, which will include providing support for the Aviary SDK, according to CEO Tobias Peggs. The Aviary team will also work closely with Adobe-owned creative community Behance and Adobe’s creative cloud platform.

Founded in 2007, the New York-based Aviary previously raised $19 million in total funding from Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions, and others.