Adobe going mobile, open-source

Paul Burnett, Adobe’s Creative Cloud evangelist in the Asia-Pacific region, speaks during an interview at the 2015 Adobe Education Leadership Forum in Bali, Indonesia, Thursday. / Korea Times photo by Yoon Sung-won

By Yoon Sung-won

BALI, Indonesia ― Adobe says it will open exclusive image processing technologies to third-party developers and render software products cloud-based and mobile-ready, a move to tighten its market dominance.

Paul Burnett, Adobe’s Creative Cloud evangelist, said during the 2015 Adobe Education Leadership Forum in Indonesia on Thursday that third-party developers could build mobile applications using Adobe’s Creative Software Development Kit (SDK).

With the SDK, they could connect their apps to Adobe’s Creative Cloud network and tap into its key image technologies, he said.

“Releasing the technologies for third-party apps will eventually be of benefit to us and for Creative Cloud subscribers,” Burnett told The Korea Times during an interview at the forum.

“Most of the third-party apps can be downloaded for free. This will make our technologies more compelling to use and help Adobe build a stronger ecosystem and membership of end users.”

Burnett said the SDK was offered free for Apple’s iOS operating system. One for Google’s Android system was planned, although it would take more time because of the diversity of screen sizes and hardware specifications for different devices, he said.

Adobe has partnered with digital stylus pen developer Adonit to launch input devices called Ink and Slide. It has also worked with writing materials maker Moleskine to roll out a notebook that users can transfer words or drawings in the notebook to smart devices by taking photos of them.

Burnett said these collaborations were in line with the launch of the Creative SDK and hinted at more partnerships to come.

“There are a lot more partnerships with other solution providers in hardware, wearable devices, design and so on,” he said. “Though I cannot name them as of now, some of them are big names in the industry.”

In 2011, Adobe started providing its media production and publication software products, including Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom, through its cloud-based service, Creative Cloud. This put an end to software products sold in packages.

“With this move, we became one of the companies that took the big step into the cloud,” Burnett said. “When we first started this change four years ago, people were doubtful because we were already the market leader. But consequently, we are seeing rapidly expanding membership. Our stock price has also doubled since then.”

Adobe has updated the service and launched Creative Cloud applications for mobile devices. The update enabled mobile devices to have the extra processing capability required for heavy image processing through cloud servers.

Burnett said users could now capture and create content through mobile devices, automatically synchronize them through the cloud network and make them available on desktop computers.

“People use smartphones, tablets and desktop computers in different ways and for different purposes,” he said. “For that reason, when we tried to connect across different devices, we focused on developing applications that make smartphones and tablets professional, serious devices, not simple toys.”