Stock Photo and Illustration Site Roundup
I’m ambivalent about stock art. The purist in me feels that the designer, as an artist, should be able to create every aspect of a project from scratch. But the pragmatist in me knows that this point of view is unrealistic. Time and budget often stand in the way of the “purity of design.” For example, recent projects have required imagery from Hong Kong and Kazakhstan. Traveling to either of those places to take a few photos for a website is clearly insane. All the same, using stock art feels like cheating.
No designer I know is unaware of iStockphoto, the most popular in the new trend toward affordable, user-uploaded stock photography. I’ve been hunting through iStock and a couple of its competitors lately, and thought I’d post a quick comparison.
iStockphoto: As I type this iStockphoto boasts 4,705,000 stock files, and their advantage is in their volume: there’s a lot of chaff (in the form of weak illustrations and cheeseball photos), but there are enough files that it’s not hard to find quality images for just about any topic. iStock has 2 main disadvantages that I’ve noticed. First, their website often runs extremely slowly, and it is not uncommon for it to be down completely. Second, their prices are continually creeping skyward. When I first used the service 2–3 years ago, a dollar bought a credit and a credit bought a small image. Now, a dollar only buys a credit if you’re willing to spend $1500 up front. At the same time, the number of credits charged for images (especially vector illustrations) has shot skyward. As iStock becomes an institution in the field, for better or worse they seem to be creeping closer to traditional stock imagery in terms of both price and quality.
Fotolia: Fotolia’s prices are where iStock’s were a couple years ago. In a suspicious coincidence, Fotolia lists 4,705,741 photos. Perhaps this is because everyone who uploads to iStock is also uploading their photos to Fotolia. But regardless of the similarity in the sizes of their libraries, Fotolia’s search results tend to be less relevant than iStock’s. There are quality, usable images on Fotolia, but finding them is a little more of a chore. Fotolia functions well as a backup when iStock is down, or when you’re on a very tight budget.
Shutterstock: Compared to iStock or Fotolia, Shutterstock is a ripoff unless you purchase a monthly subscription. However, if you do need enough imagery to warrant a 25 image per day plan, Shutterstock is worth considering. With more than six million photos, they have the largest library I’ve seen of any site in the category. As with their competitors, a substantial portion of the images feel stock-y, but as with iStock there are plenty of quality images as well.
Veer Marketplace: Veer is the newest company to enter the field. As longtime purveyors of traditional stock imagery, fonts, and hipster graphic design merchandise (of which I admit to owning more than one item), Veer seems to be doing things a little differently with their new “Marketplace” site. Recently launched with 100,000 images, their library of affordable imagery is nowhere near as large as the competition. However, they make up for the slighter selection by having the highest quality of the bunch.
Next time I’m in need of stock imagery, I plan to try Veer first. I might not find what I’m looking for in their portfolio, but if I do I can expect it to be a great image. Plus, I like supporting Veer – they promote some of the best in new and edgy typefaces and their monthly mailings are always entertaining (I highly recommend signing up for their mailing list). When Veer doesn’t have what I need, I’ll turn to iStock and Fotolia. For me, Shutterstock’s monthly plans just don’t make sense.