I'm a believer in paying for things. "Don't steal" - it's one of the ten commandments.
That means, if I want to use a stock photo on a website, on a flyer, on a poster, it should be with the copyright-holder's permission. It's their photo, and it's up to them to decide if I may use it. If I use it without their permission, it's theft.
There are a number of free photo libraries around. Under various license agreements, photographers are happy for you to use their pictures (for commercial or non-commercial purposes) at no cost. Usually they require you to attribute the photo back to them. If you use those sources, please give the attribution - otherwise you don't have the photographers permission after all. However, often the images at the free sources don't yield quite what you're looking for, so you need to pay for images
RF / RM
Time to explain a distinction that's important to anyone who's going to get into this. Images are licensed for use in two ways
Royalty Free images. This doesn't mean totally free. You pay a fee to the website you download the image from, and they pass a percentage of that on to the photographer. However you are then entitled to use the image however you want. It's a one time fee to have uncontrolled use of the image. (Sometimes there are restrictions, like you can't use it in a newspaper, but those restrictions don't amount to royalties).
Rights Managed images. The photographer (using the website as an agent) wants royalties for the photo. You get permission to use it for a week, a month, a year, and the price you pay depends on whether it will feature in a book (half a page, quarter of a page, full page), on a billboard, in a magazine, on the cover, and so on. You then pay the price as a royalty, and the artist retains more control over exactly what they've given permission for.
iStockPhoto
For years, my "go to" solution for RF images was iStockPhoto. Their prices were affordable. The pictures are royatly free, and what you pay depends on the resolution you need the photo at. They also had different collections, with the most desirable photos placed in exclusive collections that command a higher price. The search tool was well designed, so you could exclude those pricier pictures if you wished (or, for that matter, just see those ones).
You either pay in cash for the picture, or you pay in credits. You can buy 10, 20, ... credits at a time. Apart from the fact they expire after a year, you can then buy pictures priced in credits, rather than in pounds, and it works out cheaper.
One great thing is that you can download a small image, say 400 x 600 pixels. You used to be able to do that for 1 credit - about £0.83 if I remember correctly. For a website or a small image on a document, that's just fine. If you need bigger, pay 2, 3, 5, or 8 credits.
After a while, the cheapest images at the smallest sizes required 2 credits, but it was still good value for money.
New prices
All was good until they changed their prices. On 13th September everything changed (their email, needless to say, described these as "improvements", although that depends who you are).
Now, there's one price per image, whatever size you want to download. And instead of about 5 different collections of images, each with different price structures, there will just be two. "Essentials" images will cost one credit, and "Signature" images will cost 3 credits.
Great. One credit for any size. Everything simpler. Where's the catch.
These improvements require us to convert your balance to get your money's worth out of your credits. We'll convert your credits, ensuring their value is maintained or better. Credits will be divided by five, giving you your new balance. If it's not a whole number, we'll always round up in your favor (sic)
So if you had 16 credits in your account on 13th September, they'll divide it by 5 (to get 3.2), and round it up to get 4. You now have 4 credits.
The trouble is, this doesn't give value for money, and it's not "ensuring their value is maintained or better". Very, very rarely I'd need an image large enough to need 5 credits (old money). More usually, I'd download images at a size that needed only 2 or 3 credits to do so. The old 16 credits would have been enough to download 8 images. Suddenly, you can only get 4.
And that's just what happened to the old credits you already had. Look at the prices you need to pay to buy the new denomination credits. The most I'd probably buy at once, unless I had a big project on, was enough to buy 6 photos. The next tier up is 18, and I probably wouldn't use them in a year. 6 credits now cost £45 + VAT = £54. So one image would now cost £9.
Ouch. A bit different from the £0.83 you used to be able to do if you only needed an obscure image for a little-known photographer at a small size.
I'll use up any credits I already have, but otherwise it's bye-bye iStockPhoto.
So what are the alternatives for anyone else in my shoes? I've found two - I've not yet used either, but both seem to have a good range of high quality images.
Fotolia
Fotolia started in 2005, is based out of New York, but has a London office. They claim to have 32 million images on their site.
They offer a credit system. 10 credits would cost £10.20 (less if there's an introductory offer), so about £1 a credit. Small images are 1 credit (not 2), and for most needs I'd never need more than 3 credits (looking at the resolutions they offer). So an image would cost £1.02 or £3.06.
Shutterstock
Shutterstock started in 2003, also headquartered in New York, also with a London office. They have 43,077,067 images, so they're in the same order of magnitude as Fotolia.
They're pricing structure is slightly more complicated. Instead of buying fixed-price credits, and using different amounts depending on the size you need, you buy the right to download a certain number of images. If you know they'll all be at size Medium or below, the smallest you can prepay for is 12 images, which costs you £32. If you want any of them at the larger size, you can have 5 images for £32. Prepayments last for a year.
That's slightly offputting. I'd prefer a system where you can buy 10 credits, use 5 for one large image, and the other 5 for 5 smaller images. But at 12 images for £32 it's only £2.67 per picture, and the larger images are £6.40 - still much, much cheaper than iStockPhoto's new inflated prices.
Who do you use?
I don't need any new stock photographs at the moment, but when I do I'll probably use one of those two firms. I hope this helps someone else.
In the meantime, over to you, the reader: Who do you use? Are there any companies you'd recommend for royalty-free images that I haven't mentioned? Remember, the criteria are: A good selection of images, and pricing that is affordable if you don't need images at a huge size.
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