Now this is an interesting play and business expansion – Creative Market, which received a lot of attention recently around supposed favoritism as well as releasing the first WP.com Premium Theme is continuing to change things up on us as they now have a Photoshop extension.
What this extension essentially does is bring Creative Market straight to you, right in your Photoshop application, with direct access to all the premium content that you may want to use for your own creative projects.
You can browse and search the marketplace, purchase and install assets directly without ever leaving your app, and even access previously purchased collateral.
Obviously the extension is free to download so there’s nothing stopping you from at least trying it out (although one commenter has experienced the scary “Blue Screen of Death,” so be careful friends):
In addition to their announcement about their PS extension they’ve teased an upcoming release of the Creative Market API:
Today we’re also announcing our upcoming Creative Market API. We’re putting the finishing touches on an API that developers can use to integrate Creative Market content and in-app purchasing into their own websites and apps.
They’ll be able to do amazing things like integrate targeted creative assets into their websites, build white-labeled storefronts for their hosting companies, or even create in-app stores for content used in their apps – the possibilities are endless, and we’ll provide the platform to power it all.
You can sign up for the API here.
So far the reaction has been very positive throughout the blog comments and Twitter – but is there something spooky with bringing in a marketplace directly into your work environment? Maybe it’s just me (probably is) but I like to create isolation in my workflows as I develop (I’m not a designer) so this would seem “too close” for comfort, personally speaking.
It makes me wonder if other marketplaces are considering extensions to close this gap between the user and the purchase-layer of their markets and product offerings. I could see Envato and the ThemeForest team doing this with some of the assets that they sell on their various marketplaces for sure.
Thoughts? Or am I just acting like a curmudgeon to innovation?
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