Fringey — Thu, 02 Aug 2001 00:27:08 +0000

Are there any web archives that offer photos for free use? I'm sadly still in highschool, so I don't have any money that isn't used for food.

Megan — Wed, 01 Aug 2001 17:19:08 +0000

Here's an article from builder.com with some general guidelines for using stock imagery and some useful links

http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/0-7534-8-6647625-1.html?tag=st.bl.7534-8-6647625-3.txt.7534-8-6647625-1

Adam Oberdorfer — Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:47:21 +0000

I have a fairly good size collection plus I use a bunch of the web site archives.

Take a look at eyewire.com. They have a bunch of different collections as well as a catalog for the graphics professional. They've got a cool looking site too.

Hemera Photo Objects is a great set. As Megan mentioned most of the images are already cut out and great for quick and painless placement on pages. I use the people in this collection fairly often. Well worth the $60-70 for the 50,000 collection.

PhotoDisc CD's are great, but fairly expensive. I've bought a couple for very specific projects. Otherwise I stick to their web site. PhotoDisc has some of the best corporate imagery available.

Corel Gallery. One of the most complete stock imagery collections. Corel offers the collections in different sizes (I own the 1 million collection). The images are not as corporate as PhotoDisc (most of my design is very corporate so I like PhotoDisc) however having all of the Corel photos available is priceless.

Don't rule out other cheap packages. It's always nice to have as much stock art available as possible. I have a couple collections from IMSI and other publishing companies that I paid $10-20 for. Most are fairly low quality but I have used them on occasion. GettyOne.com, weststock.com, corbis.com, etc are all good on-line collections. Most of them also have CD's available.

Megan — Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:13:31 +0000

There are two options here basically - you can buy CD collections or you can sign up for an online service like ArtToday, or something like Corbis where you buy them individually I think.

I've used a couple of different stock photo collections.

Hemera Photo Objects - as the name suggests (objects), everything is already cut out from the background, so if you find that you do a lot of that this one would be good for you. Problem with that is there isn't a lot of scenery, landscapes, things like that.

PhotoDisc - full photos, really great quality... lots of very spescialized collections - looking at their site they also have an objects collection.

These seem to be much more expensive ($400 US per CD!), while Hemera is between $10 and $100 US depending on how many images you get (50,000 images for $99 US). ArtToday (online collection) is $100/year - they have clip-art too, but I don't find the quality of their photos to be all that great.