This phrase emerged in the USA in the early part of the 20th century. Its introduction is widely attributed to Frederick R. Barnard, who published a piece commending the effectiveness of graphics in advertising with the title “One look is worth a thousand words”, in Printer’s Ink, December 1921. (source: www.phrases.org.uk)
Overview
Royalty Free Images are images or other pieces of media that can be used without having to pay for royalties with each incidence of use.
We used an recommended to our clients iStockphoto in the past years. The quality of iStock images is one of the best on the market and
the price was acceptable. When Getty Images (the best/biggest stock library and the most expensive,) bought the company last yeart the prices raised and now an image cost about $40-50. We understand that price can be too high for a project with limited budget or for simple illustration on website/blog.
Free images sources
If you after free images here are a few tips how you can find images what you can use/modify in personal or commercial projects.
1. Google Images: everyone know the google image search but using those images not the best idea so to make sure you are safe use the advanced search (http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search) and select: “free to use, share or modify, even commercially”.
2. Flickr: visit the advanced search page (http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/?) and tick these points
– “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content”
– “Find content to use commercially ”
– “Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon”
Note: we really recommend you to start an account with Flickr because they offer free 1000GB space where you can keep/backup your photos. You can keep your images private and share with a click if you want.
More free photos
Here is a list where more photos available for free. They have smaller selection of images so sometimes hard to find good image by keyword but with a little work you can find really nice and professional images:
- http://www.freepik.com/
- http://www.pexels.com/
- http://thestocks.im/
- http://publicdomainarchive.com/
- http://pixabay.com/
- http://kaboompics.com/
- http://deathtothestockphoto.com/
- http://freerangestock.com/
- http://www.freeimages.com/
- http://www.stockphotosforfree.com/
- http://mazwai.com/ (free stock videos)
Affordable stock photos
One of my favourite is Depositphotos. It is a newer company with an affordable pricing structure starting at around $1. They have a good selection at one of the lowest per image costs around (http://www.depositphotos.com).
DollarPhotoClub has a massive collection of images. Pricing is simple: $1 per high-res image or vector (http://www.dollarphotoclub.com/).
Canstockphoto is onne of the best for value, but limited choice (http://www.canstockphoto.com/).
123RF have a premium microstock collection and also offer great value images (http://www.123rf.com/).
Shutterstock has a huge library of 28 million images and files. They do offer stock photos, videos, illustrations and vector (http://www.shutterstock.com).
BigStock is an affordable stock image service that specializes in images and illustrations. Their straightforward, inexpensive pricing model paired with a good range of images to meet most digital marketing needs (http://www.bigstockphoto.com).
And finally a few alternative options:
- http://stockfresh.com/
- http://photodune.net/
- http://fotolia.com/
- http://peopleimages.com/
- http://www.absolutvision.com/
Final Words
Before you decide which sources you will use do your own research and find out how much is ‘credit’ (the currency of the stock library) which allow you to buy images on a casual basis. If you regularly require images most of these services has subscription offer which is better value.
Subscription programs allow users to pay a set fee per month or per year in order to receive a designated number of credits, daily downloads or total number of downloads.
Also good idea to test these services and you can experience how easy to use the website. Use a keyword and set searching parameters and you will see if the images on the result page match your needs (quality and variety of images) or not.
