123RF acquires Pixlr for an undisclosed amount

123RF is an agency for royalty free stock photos that are available at very affordable prices. The company was established in 2005 and is a part of Inmagine Group, a traditional stock photography agency. Though 123RF started out as a library containing more than 65 million stock photos, over the years they have branched out to include stock footage and stock audios to their library. The company has just acquired Pixlr, a very popular cloud and mobile photo editor owned by Autodesk Inc. [stock_market_widget type=”inline” symbol=”ADSK” template=”basic2″ color=”default” refresh_frequency=”10″]

The amount of money paid to Autodesk to close the deal has not been revealed. This acquisition will take 123RF’s parent company Inmagine Group closer to creating a holistic creative ecosystem that will make great quality designs available to all at very affordable prices. It will also increase the number of unique monthly active users for Inmagine group and bring it towards 50 million MAUs. Pixlr’s 100 million installs by mobile users will help Inmagine Group to create a new vertically-integrated platform that will deliver engaging content to the creative community.

Pixlr offers a set of tools like photo editing tool Pixlr Editor, Pixlr Express, Pixlr iOS/Android App and Pixlr-O-Matic. It was founded in 2008 in Sweden and was bought by Autodesk in 2011, since then Autodesk has invested heavily in Pixlr in an effort to add new features and make Pixlr available to millions globally. Since Autodesk acquired Pixlr, its user base grew twenty times larger than what it initially was.

123RF is all set to take Pixlr even further, their production team of 200 will be working on Pixlr and expand its library. They will make sure that new tools and content are made available to Pixlr users on a regular basis.

“As part of our ongoing business model transition, Autodesk has decided to focus development resources on our core product portfolio, so we were pleased to find in 123RF a partner who is committed to supporting the Pixlr community and investing in ongoing enhancements to the product,” said Thomas Heermann, Autodesk senior director, digital arts. “Autodesk remains committed to providing tools and services that can help anybody make anything, and we will work with 123RF to ensure that the Autodesk and Pixlr user communities continue to have access to the broadest set of design tools.”