Have you ever been looking at a website and thought to yourself, ‘I swear I have seen this picture on another website before’. Well, I am happy to tell you this isn’t deja vu or a glitch in the matrix, you probably have seen that picture before somewhere. The reason for this is stock images.
For those that don’t know, stock images are royalty-free or licensed images that can be used on public mediums such as websites, articles, or videos. It is more or less high-quality images that individuals and businesses can use without having to worry about copyright issues. It is a mutually beneficial relationship where photographers and graphic designers can upload their images to these sites, and then get paid when users download them, usually as part of a monthly subscription.
Stock image sites come in many shapes and sizes, some only offer free images, while others charge a pretty hefty amount per image download. Most stock image sites fall in the middle of this which is a freemium’ offering, where you get a certain number of downloads for free and then have to pay for a subscription beyond that. Many also offer stock video footage as well as music, which can be a major benefit if your business creates any type of video content. Here are some of the top stock image sites out there and what they have to offer.
1. Adobe Stock
10 image free trial -> $$ subscription
I will start with Adobe Stock as this is our primary stock image site at AllReitz Group. While not the cheapest on the list, the image quality is top-notch and it comes with some additional advantages for us. We use the Adobe Creative Cloud suite to develop our content, so it is easy to just add the stock image licensing to our Creative Cloud license. The seamless integration throughout the Creative Cloud suite makes stock images easily accessible and obtainable. While it does offer high-quality video clips as well, we do not use them as they are wildly expensive.
2. Pixabay
Free!
Pixabay is one of the largest free stock image sites out there. It is easy to navigate and comes with millions of high-quality images. I am not sure how sites like this actually make money, but all it takes is signing up for an account and you can start downloading as many images as you want. As a wonderful added bonus, Pixabay also offers video clips, sound effects, and music!
3. Storyblocks
$$ subscription
Storyblocks is a stock image site for creators, by creators. While it only offers a paid subscription, it is one of the few to offer a plan with unlimited downloads. One thing that sets Storyblocks apart is their focus on taking care of their contributors, which makes the subscription fee feel more worth it. Along with standard stock images, Storyblocks also offers video clips, audio, and the very awesome ‘Storyblocks Maker’, which lets you build your own stock video clips (like this one!) from inside the website!
4. Shutterstock
10 image free trial -> $$ subscription
Shutterstock is probably one of the most popular sites on this list, which I am guessing comes down to it being one of the ‘oldest’ as well. I don’t really consider anything to be ‘old’ when it comes to the internet, but Shutterstock’s library of over 380 million images was certainly not built overnight. You may be thinking to yourself, well it’s about quality, not quantity, and I would agree, but the massive amount of quality spread throughout this enormous collection may have you rethinking that idiom. Shutterstock is also one of the few stock image sites that offer stock 3D models if you are into that sort of thing.
5. Getty Images
$$ subscription
Getty Images has the proud distinction of being the most expensive stock image site on this list by a pretty wide margin. This is due to a different target market. Where most stock image sites are tailored to creators, Getty Images tailors to writers and editors. If you are someone who reads a lot of news stories online, it is very common to see a Getty Images copyright on images associated with various articles. Getty Images gives writers around the world access to images of current events and if a picture is worth a thousand words then I guess Getty is also a pretty successful ghostwriter. For the less editorial crowd, Getty has a host of subsidiaries that provide more traditional stock images at more traditional prices.
6. FAVPNG
Free!
I have to give credit to our client redacted for showing me this one. Everyone loves portable network graphics (PNG, .png) because you don’t have to deal with an image background and they can help spice up otherwise boring space on newsletters, articles, web pages, corporate documents, etc. Well, now thanks to FAVPNG we don’t have to burn our overpriced Adobe Stock image licenses on simple graphics like these to incorporate them throughout our content. By simply creating an account we have access to millions of high-quality png graphics for free!
No comments! Be the first commenter?