What's the best stock photo site for our business?

[danb4026]

There are so many stock photo sites out there, but which ones do you think suit our needs the best?

[BVI]

We use several but dreamstime.com is awesome.

[danb4026]

Thanks, I will give it a look.

[BVI]

http://www.sxc.hu has some good free stock as well.

 

For some reason the price for stock went up a lot in 2010 - Getty Images purchased lots of the smaller players, who then ramped up their prices to redonkulous fees.

 

Shutterstock is great if you can justify the per month rates.

[BrianKitts]

We use several but dreamstime.com is awesome.

 

And cheap.... their prices beat the other sites by a long shot. I use dreamstime to pull people (or parts of people) when I'm looking for something very specific.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Does Flickr count? ...I can't say I use it for direct stock without modifications, but when I am building matte backgrounds I rely on it pretty heavily.

 

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons

[Brian Smith]

it's only video, but thought i'd mention it...

 

http://www.artbeats.com

[adarsh]

Saw this team at NAB 2010.

Pond 5 : http://www.pond5.com/

[DennisHolland]

I just ran into this one: http://www.google.com

Set size option to > 2K and off you go.

 

Serious, i have a subscription on istock for an acceptable fee p/m. If you don't have a job to do, be efficient, just strawl the site and build your own library.

[Jeff Mottle]

I just ran into this one: www.google.com

Set size option to > 2K and off you go.

 

Probably not a very good idea as Google also indexes copyrighted graphics and images, so you could get yourself into trouble doing this. That's why Google has the clause "Image may be subject to Copyright" when you use their image search function. Best to stick with sites where you know the graphics are able to be used for commercial purposes.

[DennisHolland]

You're absolutely right Jeff, it was ment to be a 'watch out' statement. If you don't want to pay for your goods, you won't make it in this business because of a totally wrong mindset.

 

Regards, Dennis

[bjornkn]

Probably not a very good idea as Google also indexes copyrighted graphics and images, so you could get yourself into trouble doing this. That's why Google has the clause "Image may be subject to Copyright" when you use their image search function. Best to stick with sites where you know the graphics are able to be used for commercial purposes.

I guess it depends on what your usage of it is?

Using it for reference surely shouldn't be a problem, which is what I use most of my downloaded images for?

I'm not sure if you're breaking any rules if you just grab a wall texture, a nice tree or grass texture?

I guess it's not allowed to do/use anything at all with copyrighted images?

BTW, I thought that generally all images are copyrighted unless explicitly declared to be PD/free?