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Stock Photography | View information about Stock Photography within our Technology Website Reviews section by reviewing this area of our website. We provide a wealth of information online to help our visitors become better informed about Computer Buzz. |
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Stock Photography
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Stock photography (also called a photo archive, picture library, image bank or photo bank) consists of existing photographs which can be licensed for specific uses. Book publishers, specialty publishers, magazines, advertising agencies, filmmakers, web designers, graphic artists, corporate creative groups, and others use stock photography frequently.
Images are commonly filed at an agency that negotiates licensing fees on the photographer's behalf in exchange for a percentage of the sales. Then the images are presented in searchable web site databases, purchased online, and delivered to the end user via download or email.
Pricing is determined by the size of the audience or readership, how long the image is to be used, country or region where the images will be used, and whether royalties are due to the image creator or owner. Often, an image can be licensed for less than $200, or in the case of the microstock photography websites as little as $1.
With rights-managed stock photography, an individual licensing agreement is negotiated for each use. Royalty-free stock photography offers a photo buyer the ability to use an image in an unlimited number of ways for a single license fee. The client may, however, request "exclusive" rights, preventing other customers from using the same image for a specified length of time or in the same industry. Such sales can command thousands of dollars. However, with royalty free licensing there is no option for getting exclusive usage rights.
Some stock photography sites offer low-resolution photography free for the purpose of preparing advertising mock-ups to demonstrate a proposed design. If the advertiser decides to use the design, the rights to use the high-resolution image then can be negotiated.
Royalty-free (a misnomer; this does not mean the image is totally and perfectly "free")
1. Purchasers pay a one-time fee to use the image multiple times for multiple purposes (subject to some limits).
2. No time limit on when you can use an image.
3. No one can have exclusive rights of a royalty-free image (the photographer can sell the image as many times as he wants).
4. A royalty-free image usually has a limit as to how many times you can reproduce it. For example, a license might allow you to print 500,000 brochures with the purchased image. Beyond that print run number, you are required to pay a fee per brochure, usually 1 to 3 cents. Magazines with a large print run cannot use a standard royalty-free license and therefore they usually either purchase images with a rights-managed license or have their own photographers.
Rights-managed (sometimes called "licensed images")
1. Purchaser pays each time the image is used.
2. There is a time limit on how long a buyer has exclusive use of an image (usually one year). This allows the photographer to sell exclusive rights to the image again when the first buyer's time limit expires.
3. You must choose a rights-managed license if you wish to negotiate exclusive use of an image. Not all rights-managed licenses are exclusive; that must be stipulated in the agreement.
4. The fee is based on such things as exclusivity, distribution, length of time used, and geographic location of use.
5. A rights-managed image usually allows a much larger print run per image than does a royalty-free license.
6. "Editorial" license is a form of rights-managed license in which there are no releases for the subjects. Since there are no releases the images cannot be used for advertising or to depict controversial subjects, only for news or educational purposes.
Computer Buzz has assembled a list of some of the premier web sites for finding images, mostly photographs. Our list is far from complete, as there are a great many such photo repositories in cyberspace. We think that these are some of the better ones.
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Picsearch
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Picsearch connects its users to the vast visual resources of the internet and uses its own technology to crawl the web and to create a searchable index of images. When a user sends a query to Picsearch, the result is received as a set of thumbnail images that are sorted by relevance. When the user clicks on a thumbnail, they are linked to the original web site where that image is located.
Picsearch image search technology has its own patent-pending indexing algorithms to maximize relevancy. It is family friendly, and all offensive material is filtered out. The site is also very user friendly as it's designed to be simple, fast and accurate.
Official Website: www.PicSearch.com
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Shutterstock Photos
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Shutterstock claims to be the largest subscription-based stock photo agency in the world. It has over two million stock photos, and its outstanding collection of premium, royalty-free images grows every day, with many photographs, illustrations, and vectors you won't find any where else. Sign up for their $199 per month subscription plan and download 25 images every day (that's 750 each month) with no hidden costs.
Official Website: www.Shutterstock.com
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Photos.com
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With a Photos.com professional royalty-free stock photography subscription you pay one annual fee of $500 and download whatever you like from their collection of more than 325,000 professional quality stock photographs and photo objects, up to 250 photos per day.
Official Website: www.Photos.com
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iStockphoto
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Istockphoto claims to be the world's preeminent collection of member-generated royalty-free stock photography and art for print and use on websites and presentations. There are no subscription fees or extra costs, and there is no charge to become a member. Find the stock image you're looking for and start downloading right away. Or contribute your own work for sale on iStock.
Official Website: www.istockphoto.com
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Fotosearch
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Fotosearch is a provider of royalty-free and rights-managed stock photography, illustrations, maps, video, and audio. It brings together many different stock agencies to allow you to quickly find and acquire "the World's stock photography at one website." The products on Fotosearch can then be licensed and downloaded for use in your advertisements, promotional materials, web sites, etc.
When you purchase a license to use an image, video clip, or audio clip, you do so based on the license agreement of the publisher of that particular content. The license agreement will be presented to you before purchase confirmation.
Official Website: www.fotosearch.com
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Stock XCHNG
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Stock.XCHNG claims to be the leading free stock photo site. Whether you just want to browse their huge image gallery or share your personal photos with others, this might be the site for you.
Browse through the categories of their huge gallery containing over 250.000 quality stock photos by more than 25.000 photographers. Share your photos with fellow designers. SXC is a friendly community of photography addicts who generously offer their works to the public free of charge.
If you have some nice photos that you'd like to share with others, you might want to join them. Chat with other members in their forum.
Official Website: www.sxc.hu
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Index Stock
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Index Stock is a full-service stock image provider with over one million rights-managed and royalty-free high resolution images. They have photos for printing brochures, advertising, annual reports, and electronic use on websites and presentations. Non-watermarked images and price agreements are available to qualified users.
Official Website: www.indexstock.com/
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Acclaim Images
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Acclaim Images has been in business since 2002 and offers high quality, limited distribution digital images and art prints. Photos and illustrations are contributed by photographers who are hand-picked for their creativity and professionalism. Royalty-free and rights-managed images are available using a quick image search. Accounts may be opened with monthly invoicing for clients with approved credit.
If you are a professional photographer or illustrator who takes your work seriously, check with Acclaim Images to see if they are currently accepting submissions.
Official Website: www.acclaimimages.com
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Corbis Motion
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In addition to conventional stock photo stills, Corbis Motion offers the most comprehensive selection of high quality moving images in the footage industry with more than 30,000 hours of both archival and contemporary film footage. This includes high energy footage across literally hundreds of subjects including deep coverage of such popular categories as people, lifestyles, business and technology, nature and wildlife, travel, time lapse, CGI and sports.
Vintage footage of the famous and not-so-famous includes iconic moments and people of history, legends of cinema and television, yesteryear's sports heroes in action.
Official Website: www.corbis.com
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Free Images
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Free Images is a high quality resource of digital stock photographic images based in Great Britain. All images are free to use on websites and printed materials, but you may not redistribute these images as a collection. They very reasonably ask that if you use any FI images, a credit to their web site is required.
All their images are claimed to be original to their web site. Most images are 1152 x 864 or 1200 x 1600; all are 24-bit maximum quality JPG. File size ranges between approximately 100 KB and 1000 Kb.
Official Website: www.freeimages.co.uk
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