Quickly find providers of stock photography. Review our directory listings for links to stock photo agencies providing stock photos, including royalty free images and rights-protected images.
Purchasing Resources for Stock Photo Agency
Over 17 Million Royalty Free Stock Photos. Start Your Search.
Search Our Large Premium Collection of Royalty Free Photos and Images.
Elements For Design & Creativity To Make Your Project Perfect, Buy Now!
Creating Ads? Download HD Images. Over 12M HD Images Available Now!
Royalty free stock image resource for Germany. Provides professional photos, illustrations, clip art, and video footage.
Fotosearch: Royalty Free Stock Photos
Provider of more than 50 publishers of stock photos, searchable at one site. Stock photography, illustration, maps, video footage, and clip art.
Royalty-free stock photos, vectors and illustrations. Low regular prices!
Royalty-Free Stock Photos and Illustrations
Royalty-free stock photos and illustrations for websites, printed media, company literature and much more. For business, personal and educational use.
Royalty free stock photos and stock footage, at prices you can afford!
Warmpicture Royalty Free Images
A premium collection of royalty-free stock images. Buy direct from the artists and save!
Stock and royalty-free photography and images searchable and under one site.
Stock and royalty-free images and photo CD titles searchable by keywords. Online-digital files are downloadable with a major credit card. CD titles ship overnight. Subjects include people, couples, lifestyle, windsurfing, business and light industry, Flor
Stock library and press agency established in Barcelona since 1973, with sales offices in Madrid, Bilbao and New York, offering color and black and white material on photographic film or digital format to a very broad client base. The company offers web s
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Stock Photos and Graphics
Download great art for your marketing, presentation and other materialsBy Chris Caggiano The latest desktop publishing and Web site creation systems make it easier than ever for a small business to create terrific looking marketing materials, presentations, newsletters, Web sites and other items. But finding great-looking but affordable photos and other graphics to work with has been a problem.
The best photos and graphics come from professional photographers and graphic designers who create exactly what you need. But hiring professionals to create custom work is prohibitively expensive for most small businesses.
Now there's a solution: Web-based stock photo services that offer millions of high quality, royalty-free stock images (photos and other graphics) that you can download to your heart's content for a modest subscription fee, or in some cases for free. High quality, royalty-free photos that can literally cost just pennies at online subscription services can be used for all kinds of purposes, including these:
- Web sites
- Multimedia presentations
- Trade show displays
- Billboards and banners
- Packaging and labels
- Broadcast video
- Business cards and letterhead
- Brochures
- Office, store or restaurant decoration
- Public areas
Find free photos on the Web
There are innumerable sites on the Internet that offer free photos for public use. Why free? Many sites try to attract customers with free images in the hope that they will purchase additional materials.
Try:
Sites that offer free stock photos abound. Check out ImageAfter for completely free photos. Try Dreamstime for photos as inexpensive as $1 apiece, or browse About.com and its lists of free or inexpensive photos.
Download high quality, royalty-free photos and other graphics by subscription
Simply sign up for a plan, pay one low fee and download hundreds of royalty-free stock photos per month.
Try:
Need photos on a regular basis? Consider subscribing to a stock photo service like the one at 123RF. Subscriptions generally provide a certain number of photos monthly. Shutterstock has a download service you should consider.
Know the difference between "free" and "royalty-free."
Free photos are just that — they cost nothing, but may be limited in what you're allowed to do with them (for instance, some are not free for commercial use). Read the fine print. Royalty-free photos, on the other hand, aren't free — they just don't generate fees every time you use them, as rights-managed photos do.
Try:
Learn the definitions of royalty-free, rights-ready and rights-managed photos at Getty Images, which offers a multitude of stock photos in all categories. A few other popular sites for finding royalty-free (as well as rights-managed photos) are Fotosearch and Photostogo.
Find free clip art on the Web
Clip art is the term for stock graphic elements that you can use to jazz up the document you're designing. Whether it's an American flag or a bullfrog, you can probably find an illustration that suits your taste.
Try:
There's also a plethora of sites offering free clip art. For instance, see GalaxyGauge's nifty Graphic Type Library for artistic drop caps, ABitBetter's funny "Screen Beans" or register on Freeze.com to access a large database of free clip art. Find more free clip art Web sites at About.com.
Consider licensing artwork for limited use
If you can't find what you need free, consider licensing what you need; you won't have to buy the work outright, as you're just paying to use it for a certain amount of time.
Try:
See Sarno Photography and Web Design for information on the benefits of licensing. To search for artwork available for license, check out Photographer's Direct, Fotosearch and Photostogo.
- Just because a photo doesn't have a copyright notice doesn't mean it's not copyrighted.
- Keep in mind the resolution of the photos you're considering. If you only plan to use a small piece of it, and you plan to blow it up larger, the photo may wind up being too grainy.
- Consider contacting local design schools to see if any photography or illustration students might be willing to work inexpensively for the experience — and a credit line.
- Royalty-free photos are generally yours for unlimited use; the price is determined by the size of the photo, not its usage. (Prices vary from very low — less than a dollar, depending upon the account you have with the vendor, the size of the image, etc. — to quite a bit.)
- If you're a heavy user, consider buying CDs of royalty-free photos, which can keep prices down.
Over 17 Million Royalty Free Stock Photos. Start Your Search.
Search Our Large Premium Collection of Royalty Free Photos and Images.
Elements For Design & Creativity To Make Your Project Perfect, Buy Now!
Creating Ads? Download HD Images. Over 12M HD Images Available Now!
Sevice of AG Editions for editorial photographers and photo buyers. Biological Photo Service and Terraphotographics provide images in the natural sciences - life, earth, environmental - from 75 photographers, most of whom teach and/or actively pursue labo
http://www.agpix.com/biologicalphoto.shtml
"Ants in pants" natural history photo libraries representing everything in nature from Australia and worldwide. Online price quotes available.
Historical and contemporary photos offered by a subsidiary of The Associated Press.
Photo archive of fine art from prehistory to present. Art Resource also functions as the official rights and permissions representative for many institutions in the United States and abroad.
Professional stock images from all over the world, specializing in Australian people, landscapes and images, Antartica, world wildlife, travel photography and environmental images, along with health, medical and scientific stock photos.
Australian Picture Library (APL)
One of Australia's largest commercial photo libraries and agencies providing a wide range of image subjects.
http://www.australianpicturelibrary.com.au/
Behind the Viewfinder: A Year in the Life of Photojournalism
Join photojournalists from around the world as they live, work, and report the daily stories of their communities. A picture is worth 1000 words, now, read the words of the people behind the viewfinder.
http://www.digitalstoryteller.com/YITL/
Providing photographic online services, stock photography, assignment photography, picture research and image library.
Medical, biomedical and scientific photographs and illustrations.
An online image resource for healthcare advertising and communications.
Site offering free digital photographs of buildings, monuments, landscapes and cityscapes.
Formerly Definitive Stock, FPG is a full-service stock photography agency. Provides rights-protected images, FPG Collection and FPG Historical, and royalty-free images, iSwoop, in one location.
Search for stock photography and royalty-free images, thousands of downloadable photos, free catalog and sample images available.
Photographer specializing in aviation and military, firefighting and emergency subjects.
Database of digital images from multiple royalty-free and licensed brands intended for creative professionals.
Developer of InView(tm) or StockView(tm) cataloging software. Software runs on Windows. Products are sold to the photography and graphics arts industries.
Affordable stock photography for nonprofit organizations. Images depicting real life people and situations. A collection that's easy to search and free low resolution files for comps, CD catalog and research available at no charge.
Image research and services for stock photography and film footage from agency with offices throughout the US and several international divisions.
Top quality images from a leading photographer. Order on-line from our gallery.
http://www.pascalb-photos.com/
Mark and Audrey Gibson Stock Photography
Specialists in Location Photography of American People, Places and Concepts. Featuring outstanding stock photography of abstract designs, agriculture, Americana and American history, children, cityscapes, couples and families, industry and occupations, na
Archive of images featuring the modern armed forces of the United States, Russia, and Britain. These photographs are available to graphic arts professionals in publishing, government, manufacturing, advertising, and public relations, at normal stock photo
Produces and sells media content including stock photography, video production, web site creation and hosting, and Internet content development.
http://www.naturalightproductions.com/
Selected photos from Australian newspapers, featuring sport and popular culture. Search and order photographs online. Their bank is regularly updated with the latest sporting pics, celebrities, entertainment, travel, animals, places, science, technology a
Web site provides professional travel stock photography for professional users.
Photos To Go is a web-based source of hundreds of thousands of digitized professional stock photographs made available at sensible prices for small business and personal use.
Offers a large resource for scientific, medical and technological photographs and illustrations. Their website provides online search and ordering services in addition to image catalog and CD-ROM request.
Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
Service of the Library of Congress. 90% of the records are accompanied by one or more digital images. In some collections, only thumbnail images display to those searching outside the Library of Congress.
http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
Browse dozens of free downloadable visuals. Public Domain Images selects visuals from Washington, DC, home of the world's largest public domain collections of photographs, slides, films, tapes, music, speeches and other media.
Stock photography of the performing arts. Representing the best performing arts photographers in the world.
Company offers a selection of high-quality stock photography.
The AP Photo Archive & Graphics Collection
A collection of contemporary and historical images including AP Graphics. New graphics collection features hundreds of informative AP Graphics covering breaking news, health and science, features, business and sports, and includes a selection of Spanish t
Washingtonpost.com contributing staff photographers collection.
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/photo/bestofthepost/index.html
Tips & Advice to help you make your decision on Stock Photo Agency
Stock photography involves the licensing of photographs to businesses for specified uses. A stock photo agency will have a huge amount of images that can be purchased, all of which are usually stored in a searchable online database.
Many companies need images for their marketing campaigns and websites. Often it is easier and quicker to use existing photographs than to commission them yourself. The stock photos are usually produced in professional studios and are of high quality.
A major advantage for most companies is that they do not need to hire a professional photographer for a project, which saves time and costs associated with this. On the other hand, you may not get as ... more
Stock photography involves the licensing of photographs to businesses for specified uses. A stock photo agency will have a huge amount of images that can be purchased, all of which are usually stored in a searchable online database.
Many companies need images for their marketing campaigns and websites. Often it is easier and quicker to use existing photographs than to commission them yourself. The stock photos are usually produced in professional studios and are of high quality.
A major advantage for most companies is that they do not need to hire a professional photographer for a project, which saves time and costs associated with this. On the other hand, you may not get as specific an image as you would like. The photos will also not be unique and could be used by competitors as well. However, the vastly reduced costs of using stock photos usually outweigh the disadvantages for most creative projects undertaken by most businesses.
There are many stock photo agencies advertising on the Internet, and some specialize in certain types of image. Some larger companies include Getty Images, Shutterstock and iStockphoto.
To find out more about how a stock photo agency can help your business, click on the links on this page, which were researched and compiled by Business.com.