Autodesk Acquires Online Photo Editing Service Pixlr

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
pixlr

Autodesk, maker of design, engineering and entertainment software, this morning announced that it has acquired online photo editing and sharing service Pixlr.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but Autodesk says the transaction is not expected to have any impact on its recently issued guidance.

Pixlr founder Ola Sevandersson has joined Autodesk.

Pixlr was started in Sweden in August 2008 and offers a suite of cloud-based image tools and utilities such as photo editing tool Pixlr Editor, Pixlr-O-Matic, screengrabbing browser extensions Pixlr Grabber and one-click photo sharing tool imm.io.

The company’s tools are built to enable non-professionals to create, edit, and share images online via social networking services such as Facebook and Flickr.

For Autodesk, the acquisition is a way to expand its line of products for consumers with image editing capabilities. Autodesk SketchBook Pro desktop users, for example, will now be able to read and write image file formats such as PXD and exchange files while maintaining data such as layers.

The acquisition is reminiscent of Google’s purchase of Picnik back in March 2010. Other alternative online photo editing services include FotoFlexer, LunaPic, Splashup and Pixenate.

Company: Pixlr
Website: pixlr.com
Launch Date: August 17, 2008

Pixlr is a provider of cloud-based photo editing services, delivering editing capabilities in the browsers for both consumers and companies. Pixlr provides a platform for many kinds of 3rd-party integrations.

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Company: Autodesk
Website: autodesk.com
Launch Date: 1982
IPO: February 1, 1990, NASDAQ:ADSK

Autodesk is a software design and service company. The company operates in four segments: Platform Solutions and Emerging Business and Other (PSEB); Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC); Manufacturing Solutions (MSD); and Media and Entertainment (M&E). The company primarily serves customers in architectural, engineering and construction, manufacturing, geospatial mapping, and digital media and entertainment markets through distributors and resellers in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific.

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