PunchStock Reviewer's Comments

PunchStock, provides designers with access to over half a million images from 36 different collections. Unlike some of the more exclusive providers, they offer some high- quality royalty free images for as low as $20 and some CD collections for around $100.

Although PunchStock is an excellent choice for many stock photography needs, they do not offer special interest images, assignment photographers or custom CDs.

Feature Set:  

This stock photography service offers royalty free and rights protected images. Their prices are reasonable for the level of quality they offer, royalty free images can be downloaded for anywhere between $20 and $750.

They offer a variety of resolutions, from 'low' resolution at 731 x 482 pixels, 72 dpi to 'very high' at 5040 x 3327 pixels, 300 dpi, they also offer 'large' (100MB) to 'XX large' (300 MB) at an additional price.

They include a lightbox with membership and mail out large files on CD at not additional cost.

Unlike Gettys, they do not offer prints, assignment photographers, custom CDs or video clips.

Search/Sort Options:  

PunchStock supports searches by theme or keyword, color name, collection, release status, orientation and color or black and white. However, you cannot search by photographer or exact color. One nice thing about their search option is that they can adjust for bad spelling, unlike others that require exact spelling and slow down the search process.

Their theme searches such as 'jealous' or 'orange' produced accurate results as well as their concept search such as 'profit.' They also can support a search for 'objects' or 'cutout.'

Quality:  

PunchStock provides above average images that are competitive with some of the more high-end collections. In fact, they offer some of the same collections as Getty, Jupiter and Adobe including Stockbyte, Brand X, Comstock, Thinkstock, RubberBall, fStop, Corbis and Creatas.

Selection:  

They offer a huge selection, including 24,000 for Photodisc alone and 16,000 through UpperCut their rights protected collection. They offer photographs as well as quality illustrations.

However, they do not include special interest subjects such as photojournalism or celebrities. They also do not include editorial or vector images or clip art.

Summary:  

PunchStock offers instant access to some discriminating yet contemporary images from swank and stylish collections. For a moderate price, persuasive and vibrant images can be obtained that are suitable for unique ads and gripping copy.

However, if you need editorial images or commissioned work see Getty Images, our #1 choice and a complete stock photography service.