Commercial Image Providers</

For a good article by Stefan Petrucha on the differences, advantages and disadvantages of licensed, royalty free and public domain images see the March 2001 issue of AV Video Multimedia Producer.

Memberships Sites:
ArtToday This site has weekly ($14.95) to yearly ($159.95) membership plans.

Stock Photo Agencies:
Commercial stock photos are typically acquired in 2 ways, through licensing, or through royalty-free purchases. Licensed materials usually involve a fee for each use and can designate how, where, and how the materials can be used. In contrast, for the price of a single purchase, royalty free stock footage can be used as often and how the purchaser chooses.

iStockphoto Purchased by Getty in February, 2006 iStockphoto offers images at very affordable prices.
See the June, 2006 issue of Wired for more about iStockphoto in article by Jeff Howe about "The Rise of Crowdsourcing."

Two of the biggest players today are Corbis, a company owned by Bill Gates, and Getty Images, a company founded by Mark Getty. Through buyouts the two have bought themselves into dominance. (Helman and Post)

Corbis Corbis is owned by Bill Gates. Corbis focuses on the consumer markets and print media, more on real people and historic events, rather than conceptual stock photos. Its collection includes 30 years of UPI photos. (Helman and Post) A variety of single images and photo CD collections. Also has a series of limited edition prints and Ansel Adams images for sale. In contrast to Getty, it owns its archival assets.

gettyimages
Founded by Mark Getty, grandson of J. Paul. Getty Images sells mainly to the advertising and editorial markets.Getty usually manages usage rights and pays photographers rather than owning stock images outright. The images may be famous, but not of famous people.(Helman and Post) Here you can search multiple sites, for llicensed and/or royalty- free images. Getty is a huge. It encompasses Allsport, Artville, Bridgeman Art Library, Energy Film, Eyewire, Food Pix, FPG, Hulton/Archive, Illustration Works, The Image Bank, The Image Bank Film, The National Geographic Image Collections, Photodisc, and Stone.

Brandxpictures Some members of the New Media Center said that they have found BrandX Pictures to be very useful, and that they have quality pictures with a good license agreement

Footage.net "the one source for the best footage available anywhere: the only place ad, film, TV and digital video pros can instantly search for FREE the footage trade's best stock, archival and news footage databases all at once." Aimed at commercial producers, the materials are probably too expensive for educators.

FOTOSEARCH "...search over 50 stock photography, illustration, and video footage publishers at one site..."

Image Farm Contemporary, royalty-free images.The Image Farm photo collection features a diverse selection of images including objects, visual concepts and backgrounds.

Photospin.com A graphic designer at CSU (thanks C.F.) pointed out a webpage with their bargain prices EDUCATORS check this out.

PHOTOVAULT These folks have discounted pricing for educational/ institutional web sites.

Public Domain Images
Public domain photos. Some freebies but the site is largely promotes a book and search services. (from Knight (1998).
Unprofessional web site design.

The Stock Solution A variety of single images and photo CD collections. Represents 100 photographers/200,000 images

Visual Language "A unique resource for rare and beautiful imagery" aesthetic antique maps and illustrations

Other Fee Based Providers

PhotoGraphicLibraries.com This is a list of stock photo suppliers compiled by PhotoGraphicLibraries.com

Google A Google search for "stock photos" provides a list of potential vendors for stock photos.

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