Stock photography resources

I think we need a thread for stock protography resources. Please share the sites you are using for stock images and vector graphics.

Personally the best I've found till now is Alamy which has million of free to use photographies :)

Edit by Tim URL removed see below

guess the largest free portal by quite some way is http://www.sxc.hu/

sxc.hu is great, it's the only source of free stock images I use regularly.

free?

this is what I got:

0.9 MB 460 x 691 0.1 MB US $ 85.00

PS. maybe it would be useful id the modify and quote button are not side by side :D

I think the prices are for the high resolution images, but they are free for the web use.

460*691 is not that big (and is the lowest res. they offer)

Here is another one I just found on SU:

http://yotophoto.com/

Wrong,

Alamy Images are NOT a free photo resource.  Everything is SOLD as either licenced for a specific use or Royalty Free.  Even web use.   

Alamy are trialling a system like Getty where their spider crawls the web looking for stolen (not paid for) image use.  Getty regularly bill $thousands for stolen images so if you are using Alamy comps for websites I'd get them off pretty damn quick....

Thanks for the info JayBee, and welcome to webdigity :)

Cheers,

Yep, I've read some pretty scary stories about guys being billed four figure sums for a 500px wide web image that was "borrowed" off Getty comps and their technology for sniffing out unauthorised use is getting very sophisticated and is being used by many of the major stock resources now.

Its well worth making sure that any "free" images you use are under a free to use commercially licence in order to avoid a nasty surprise further down the road.

Looks like an interesting site....I'm off to explore more :)

JayBee

Interesting, image recognition is pretty much still in its infancy I would be surprised if their hunting process is very automated, barring real stupidity like using the same name.

I use a lot of stock photos and sell a lot of photo's through stock photography sites most people who use my photos tend to crop and manipulate them, I'm guessing its the same with most photos this would make it very difficult to identify theft automated (it's why CAPTCHA are so good) only a byte for byte copy would work, unless you employ some other basic protections such as steganography (but this would only work if enough data can be extrapolated from the modified piece).

Still the moral is always check the licensing :D

As a photographer contributing to Alamy, I can tell you that my work and the work of other contributors is copyrighted and most definitely not free. I don't know what to make of someone suggesting--publicly, at that--that stealing from someone is a good idea.
If that's the only way you can do business, perhaps a different line of work is in order or at least a very large dosage of clue.

Whoa, MGS, no one here has ever condoned stealing in the form of copyright theft.

Nikolas did not realize that the site was not one that allowed free use; simple as that. If anyone needs to get a "dose of clue", that would be you.

How hard would it have been to simply say, "I'm a contributor to that site and the images are copyrighted and must be paid for."? Sheesh.

You might be a photographer but perhaps learning to read may help, Nikolas had missunderstood the licensing and was under the impression it was free, probably comes from the term royalty free.

He was not condoning stealing!

Hope I wont go to prison for this :)

I just thought exactly what you said Tim. Maybe the site itself is a little misleading as I had the impression that the photos are free to use.

My mistake wasn't in reading comprehension but in thinking that terms widely used in the industry, like "royalty free", would be well-understood by practitioners. And that the pricing button and copyright statements were clear enough. If someone crawls through my window and takes my tv, I'm not likely to be placated with "the window was open so I thought it was okay!" In any case, let me say more diplomatically that Nikolas' suggestion wasn't a good one and we on the supply side watch each other's backs. I'm sure you folks don't like your work taken without payment or permission, either.  I have a lot of web designer and graphic artist friends and I know that's true. We all work hard and want to be able to make an honest living in our respective fields.

I don't get it, what is the meaning of "royalty free photos"?

I thought those pictures are free to use and they were just selling the compilation (like the linux distributions)

Actually the site is incredibly missleading,

The phrase
To download comp, right click on the image and click Save Picture As...

Next to the picture and with little or no mention of buying except a small add to cart button,

So your analogy is a bit inncorect its more like having a sign on the window saying please come in...

Royalty free means the photographer will not claim royalties (want to be paid per showing) of the photo
In this case its royalties like those of records or other art works

That's exactly what made me take a wrong conclusion about this site :)

For those curious this is what a standard page looks like.

Now what would you think if you saw a page like that?

Nikolas, it's explained here: [URL REMOVED by TIM]
Basically, it means that, unlike with traditional (rights-managed) licensing, you pay a one-time fee and for that you get to use the image in any way you want, forever. With rights-managed licensing, you pay for a specific use and that use only. For example, I just had someone contact me who wants to re-license an image for use for a longer period. I've also recently licensed one image five times to the same people because they want it for a book, web site, direct mailing, etc., and there's a fee associated with each use. With RF, you license it once and that's it.

The word "buy" is a bit misleading because you're not actually buying the picture but instead a license to use it in either a very specific way (rights-managed) or without regard to use (royalty-free). The word "free" is probably unfortunate, too. It's still a copyrighted image and doesn't belong to you, even if you license it RF. Free in this context means you're free to use it for the agreed licensing fee without need to re-license for additional use.

I hope that helps and I believe your misunderstanding was genuine.

Edit by Tim, explanation is good enough without the link love,

I understand, but don't you think that the alamy site is a little misleading?

I am sure that there will be hundrends of people who using your photos without buying them because of this statement.

Since we're on the topic I have a question: would watermarking the image make it more obvious that you need to pay for it? Some of us have been trying to encourage Alamy to do that and most stock agencies in fact do.

Watermarking generally slows a site down if being done on the fly, and causes compression issues (not a problem on a preview perhaps) for security purposes you would be better of with some sort of steganography solution, I use this on my photos, storing which stock photo site I'm distributing the image from etc but that's at a personal level.

I think the problem is easy to avoid just take down the line about downloading to the computer, and make the buy now button prominent (good business practice)

Good point: doing the watermarking on the fly would probably be pretty resource-intensive for a site that busy. I don't know how they generate the preview images. Re-sizing on the fly probably wouldn't be a good idea, either, so I would tend to think the previews are pre-made. Other sites commonly do watermarking and in fact Alamy used to. The thing about downloading is meant to allow people to make mockups to experiment, get approval, etc. but, yes, I can see where that might lead to the wrong conclusion.

I agree about steganography. It would certainly help with web usage and I have to think that's pretty much all you could do with images of that resolution.

Comp = compensate => free

Right or wrong, the implication on the screen Tim showed is that the image can be downloaded for free. I'm guessing the intent here is to allow folks to better evaluate the image to see if it meets their needs before they purchase it. Truly a customer friendly idea; but, not a good way to protect the copyrights of the photographers.

I have learned from my own sites and those I frequent that most site visitors do not take the time to read TOS, About, and other pages that contain the policies of the site. The best option is to ALWAYS list the policy alongside the item being discussed.

Rather than allowing potential customers to download the images, it might be better to have a link to a full-sized image and include the image's dimensions and (aw shoot can't think of the word that means pixels per inch and those types of things). As it is done now, it encourages people to 'borrow' and use the images without permission.

Too many of us English speaking folks forget that there are many customers like Nikolas and Olaf for whom English is a second language. Royalty free is indeed a concept that many, even those who would be classified as professionals, do not fully understand.

istockphotos.com - you have to pay to get photos however the pictures are very good quality wise.

how hard is it for them to indicate that "The images here are not free?" just one sentence will clear things up greatly.

anyway, here are my resources:

http://stellar-one.com/public/us_federal_government_public_domain_images.htm
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/histlink.htm#Public
http://www.library.uni.edu/instruction/guidepublicdomain.shtml