Buying images online: Choosing a stock photo agency
Choosing a right stock photo agency to buy images online is important and depends on your needs: do you look for photos or illustrations; do you need images for web or print applications, and how many do you need; will you buy constantly or you just need a couple of photos or illustrations.All microstock sites offer royalty-free photos, some sell vector illustrations as well, and very few offer footage. Prices for individual images start at just 1$, and can be even less if you purchase a subscription plan.
Quantity
If you are not going to buy a lot of images, the best choice would be an agency where you can purchase a small credit package (5-10$) to buy individual photos or illustrations (for example, BigStockPhoto, StockExpert, iStockPhoto, or Dreamstime). If, on the contrary, you want to buy large volumes of images regularly the best choice would be an agency offering cost-effective subscription plans. More and more agencies are now offering subscription plans in addition to credit packages (for example, Dreamstime, StockXpert, 123rf.com). Shutterstock is the only agency offering just subscriptions, and can be your best choice if you are ready to buy up to 750 photos and vector illustrations per month.Quality
Quality of images is important. Basically, if you need photos for web applications, any agency will be good in terms of image quality. If you need high-resolution photos for print, the good idea would be to buy from an agency which has high quality standards and a zoom option on the website, so that you could check an image at full size to make sure the quality is good enough. As a photographer, I can say that the strictest stock photo sites in terms of quality of photos are iStock, Shutterstock and Dreamstime, so you can be sure that photos won't contain artifacts, noise, will have good focus, and will be suitable for print applications. At least this is true about the latest images in the collection. It often happens that in the beginning, trying to expand their collections as quickly as possible, new agencies tend to have lower quality standards than bigger, well established sites.Variety
The largest collections are offered by Shutterstock, iStockPhoto, Fotolia, Dreamstime, BigStockPhoto. Shutterstock adds to its collection about 35,000 new images every week. iStock is working hard to get as much of exclusive artists as possible, so in addition of the pictures that you will find on any big site, it offers many unique images that you won't see anywhere else. Dreamstime and some other sites also have a number of exclusive images.Pricing
Basically, most sites offer similar prices. They start at 1$ for smaller web resolution images, and go up to 5-6$ for high-resolution images for print. Subscription plans are cost-effective (price per image can be as low as 0.30 - 0.40 cents) and allow you to buy around 25 photos per day.To buy individual images, you need first to obtain a credit package. Image prices are usually indicated in credits, and 1 credit equals approximately 1$. For example, a small 72-dpi image for web would cost 1 credit, and a large 9" x 6" print size image at 300 dpi would cost 6 credits. Different credit packages are available (5, 10, 25, 100 credits etc.), and the more credits you buy, the more you can usually save.
New stock photo agencies
It seems like microstock photography becomes really popular, because there are so many new stock photo agencies that have appeared during the last couple of years. Some of them are really good in terms of design, functionality and navigation, and seem to integrate the best features of their older and well established competitors. Some of them are really bad and uncomfortable to navigate. The danger with new agencies is that they often have lower quality standards and accept photos that bigger agencies reject. So if you are intending to buy a photo for print, it is a good idea to zoom it and check at 100% size if such an option is available on the website.My favorite among the new stock photo agencies is ImageCatalog. They are constantly growing their collection, and I hope one day they will have enough of good quality images to compete in the ever growing market of micro stock photography.
