I am looking for a site that supplies stock photography. Business images, in particular. I have found quite a few sites. Is there a place where you would recommend to purchase stock images?

Thanks

Hi Amy. You'll find that image collections on cd are far cheaper than those from web sites. Your local larger computer store should have those collections in stock.

If you try a Google search you can also find a lot of sites that have a lot of free graphics on them for just about anything. Takes a bit of time to weed through them all, as you'll find a lot of junk sites, and of course those wanting to charge you, but if you persevere you'll find a lot of free graphics on a good search. In the end it depends on if the cost outweighs the time to search or vs. vs. lol. GL on it either way

Good tips above, another way to go would be istock, some of their images are very affordable and there is a good choice.

http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php

If you go onto the Creative Commons site, you will find a whole bunch of photographs offered for use with or without certain restrictions and conditions. Many of them are taken by amateur photographers or semi-professionals who ask for no more than a minor mention, and in some cases a link back to the original photo and information. Many of these images are in the photostreams of the flickr community. However, if you do use these photographs, please play fair and make sure the author knows you are using them and has given you permission to do so. It could well save you a lot of hassle at a later date.

Personally I did a photography course so as to be able to handle a camera with confidence and take my own pictures in order to avoid any problems with copyright. Using a digital camera is really very easy, particularly if you stick with a bridge camera or similar. You will probably never need really high quality images on the web (slows the page down too much) so even the best photographs will need to be optimized anyway.

But otherwise as already suggested, you can use a search engine to come up with lots of alternative sites for stock images.

This is true, and works great for many people. For me the collections don't work because I need more photos to choose from. If I use a stock photo web site I get to choose from MILLIONS, instead of hundreds of photos that would be in a collection.



I agree that istockphoto is the best. It's the only site that I use personally for web graphics, and when you download the "extra small" images (which is all you need for WEB use) it only eats up one credit, so its affordable too! They also have sound files, video files, and AWESOME backgrounds!

There is also a site called bigstockphoto.com that offers graphics that are good, but not as good as istockphoto. I occasionally use bigstock when I need images for PRINT because they are cheaper than istockphoto when you need high res images.

Another one that's not always creative commons, but a lot of times attribution license:

http://everystockphoto.com

Great selection, but I would always double check the sources(license) with these guys.

If you do use Google to search for images, click on advanced search and look in hte lower right corner. You will find a filter for license such as personal use, commercial use, and if you are allowed to modify the image.

This may limit the images you find, but you are less likely to get into copyright trouble.

I get a lot of images from www.bigstockphoto.com - quite a lot cheaper than istock

Andy

Thanks for that tip BillR, I have refrained from using google to search for images just so I wouldn't be using someone's copyrighted work and end up in trouble, so it's nice to know there's a way to check for that