Why Use a Stock Photography Service?

Stock photography services provide designers with instantaneous access to royalty free or rights managed images for commercial, electronic or editorial purposes. Some services offer extremely reasonable subscriptions that provide designers with hundreds of royalty free downloads each month, while others offer rights protected, hard to obtain or commissioned images by top photographers.

Here are a just a few reasons to consider a stock photography service for your next project:

• Access - Through many services you can gain access to literally millions of images from multiple collections.
• Speed - Most services offer immediate pricing and download ability.
• Rights and Usage Management - Quality services offer images and provide account management tools that assist in monitoring usage and expiration dates.
• Search Ability - Quick search options find images applicable to the designers needs instantly; some even have the ability to search by a specific color.
• Inspiration - Exceptional visuals invoke creative thought and may help you to develop compelling and communicating designs or media projects that you may not have envisioned on your own.

In this site, you'll find articles related to stock photography services, as well as comprehensive reviews and a side-by-side comparison to help you make an informed decision on which service is right for your publishing needs.

At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don’t Have To.™

What to Look For in a Stock Photography Service

When choosing a stock photography service one of the most important considerations is how you're going to use the image. Some applications require certain resolution or size for quality purposes or a project may need a specific license.

Once you know how you're going to use the picture, an image search can be conducted with specific criteria in mind. An upscale stock photography service provides access to quality images through searches that provide quick and relevant results.

Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate Stock Photography Services:

Features
This criterion refers to the collection of account management tools and services the stock photography company offers. This may include the variety of resolutions available, the types of licenses they offer as well as whether they offer media management features like a lightbox or pasteboard tool or comp images

Search/Sort Options
A huge selection and exceptional quality is useless if the images can't be found. An efficient service offers multiple search filters that produce applicable and targeted results.

Quality
A superior stock photography site offers striking, expert and compelling images that are applicable to a wide range of projects. For the purpose of this review, quality was evaluated by designers that use stock images daily and not professional photographers.

Selection
Image diversity and abundance reflects the stock photography service's ability to provide images for multiple applications. This criterion scrutinizes the number of collections available, the types of images available and the total quantity of photographs.

It may be helpful and budget savvy to use several services, for example, one for royalty free, another for rights protected and perhaps even a third for assignment photographer images. Refer to the side-by-side comparison above to begin your search for the best stock photography service for your next project.