Stock Photography... who do you use?
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- Rubba_Bubba
Hi all, which stock photo site's do you use to buy imagery? I have been using istock, however they are getting expensive. Thinking of trying shutterstock.
- Amicus0
There are some cheaper sites but you seem to get what you pay for. Cheaper sites seem to have either less images to choose from or a lower overall quality.
Shutterstock definitely has less images than iStock.
BTW... Custom is always better. I can't tell you how many times I've been forced into stock photography then seen the same photo used in the same publication for someone else or used by a competitor or totally unrelated entity in their brand materials.
- ryngo0
Mostly istock, if it's for quick mock ups sometimes sxc.hu or even flickr.
The LiveSurface library looks good for some stuff but is pretty expensive
- slappy0
Have been using thinkstock as they advertised that they include libraries from istock and jupiter images etc.
Have been ok for people shots but some other things such as "burnt toast" have been shit. I just want a pic of smoke coming out of a toaster FFS!
- scarabin0
i use jupiter because they seem to have everything.
i'm sure it's expensive as shit though, we have some sort of package that lets us download as many high-res images as we want for comp use
- tOki0
^
Wish I had one of those. They only do those with really big agencies because they are such important clients. When you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you expect to get what you need to sell the work. If the client loves it then bam you'll go and get full license but if you try with a watermarked low res well we all know how shite that looks..We use istock and dreamstime sometimes but I always push our designers to be creative with the images they use and avoid anything that is overused. "most downloaded" = bad bad!
The terrible thing about stock imagery and istock in particular is what Amicus has said already - you see the same shit everywhere once you are aware of it lol.
For example I see this girl several times a day online and in my physical surroundings:
And don't forget her boyfriend:
