Images for your Web Site

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Images for your Web Site

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

While developing your web site, you might come across the need for some images. There are several ways for you to get these images - from taking the photos yourself, designing an image, having the client giving you the images, or retrieving the images from a web site.

Types of Images

When you are searching on your favorite search engine for images, there will be many sites that come up and you will see a few terms: free, royalty free, rights managed. Media is offered to users usually at some type of price. Some image / video / audio files are managed in a way to make sure the user who created that file will be paid accordingly.

Free Images

With this type of offering, you can download the image from the company / web site at no charge. You should not ever have to pay a fee for this file, no matter how many times you use the image.

Each web site will have a legal or terms of conditions web page. Always read this page thoroughly before using any of the images.

Royalty Free Images

With this type of agreement, you can use the image (or possibly a video file) for commercial use at one specific charge, no matter your audience. This fee is usually paid once to the company you purchased the image / video / audio file.

As stated above, review the terms of the web site that you purchased the file from. This will usually tell you how you can use the image (maybe a certain number of web sites, etc). If you have any questions, always contact the company. It would be better for you if you e-mailed said company. This way, you have written proof from the company in case anything happens. You always want to make sure you are protected.

Rights Managed Images

Another term you might see is rights managed. This basically means that you need to tell the company how the image is going to be used. And then the price is based on that use.

For example, if you were going to use the image in a small community newsletter that goes to 400 people, the price might be $1,000.00. However, if you have a newsletter that is sent out to four million people, the price for the image would be increased substantially.

Web Sites that Have Free Images

stock.xchng: This is a web site that is usually mentioned when someone asks for photographs or images for a website. Their meta description says:

stock photography community - browse our huge gallery for high quality stock photos or share yours with others

Before downloading and using their images, you will want to review their Legal Information to make sure you are in compliance. It seems they make it pretty easy for users to download and use their images.

Free Picture Click: This web site offers very few images unfortunately consisting mainly of a few animals (giraffes, elephants, penguins, sea lions, horses, zebras) and then a few pictures of some flowers and sunsets. I won't bother you with their meta description either. But you never know - you might find one or two images that will help you with a web site or two.

Web Sites that Have Royalty Free Images

Stock Photography: I have never used this site before. In their meta description:

Search our royalty free stock images and photos or browse a giant selection of stock photography. Purchase royalty free stock photos at iStockphoto.com

Reviewing their overview, you can purchase credits to use the image on your web site. You should also review their content license agreement before signing up.

STOCKXPERT: This is another image web site that I have not used. Looking at their introduction page, they seem very reasonable in their costs. Their meta description says:

Looking for high quality stock photos? Want to sell your work? Go no further: Stockxpert is the place to buy and sell stock images & Footage!

This might even be a good place for amateur and profession photographers to sell their images easily. And as usual, before signing up, review their Legal Information.

Dreamstime: This is one that I have used before. They have some unique images I think. And they made it very easy to view the images and search for the ones that I needed. Their description is:

Stock photography community providing high quality stock photos and stock images. Free photos added weekly.

They even offer some free images. This is one of the web sites I would recommend if you needed images. And check out their Terms and Conditions.

Corbis: This web site will allow you to search between royalty free and rights managed images. This web site seems to have perhaps a higher price than most, but the images they provide are fantastic. Their meta description says:

Millions of images online, featuring the finest in historical, fine art, business, technology, celebrity, travel, sports and nature photography for advertising, publishing and multimedia design.

Some have been known to say that Corbis is one of the better web sites that provide images of a higher caliber.

Inmagine: This web site boast the "world's largest premium royalty-free collection" with over 2.6 million images. Even their meta description says:

The best royalty free stock photography images under one roof. More than 2,600,000 stock photos ,images, photographs and pictures for immediate purchased. Download the whole CD anytime. See the difference.

If you wish to view their images, you should create an account. This will allow you to view the images without a watermark.

Getty Images: This website is probably very well known. It has been around for years and actually just sold for over $2 billion. Getty Images have also been known to pursue users who put their images on a web site without proper licensing. Their meta description

For Digital stock photos and on-line stock photos - Getty Images is the leading provider of creative and editorial imagery and film to communications professionals around the world. Our visual content appears each day in newspapers, magazines, advertising, films, television, books and websites

They do not seem to allow you to view their images unless you create an account. Once your account is created, you might even receive a phone call from them within a week.

FreeFoto.com: The first thing I did notice about this site is that it shows exactly how many images, sections, and categories are in their system. Their meta description

FreeFoto.com is the largest collections of free photographs for non-commercial use on the Internet.

While everything says free, I did see a price listed on their web site so that is why I listed the web site here. I do not recommend this web site though, because my browser told me it had blocked 14 pop-up windows.

Thought Equity: In this web site, you can buy video clips and then get some images for free. Their meta description

Royalty Free stock footage and Rights Managed stock footage from Sony Pictures, HBO, NBC News, NCAA, National Geographic and more--for a new generation of digital storyteller.

seems to suggest that their images comes from some very well known companies.

EZ Royalty Free: At first glance, you might think this is a blog and not a web site that offers you images. They do not have a meta description unfortunately to list. Some of their links do not work and I did not see a legal statement on their page. I saw an information link but I did not bother to click on that link. This is another web site that I would not recommend to users.

Feel free to post any other web sites that offer images (free, royalty free, rights managed) to help to add this list, since it probably is ever growing. Even if the web site is Free Picture Click with just a few images let others know about them. You never know what might help a webmaster in developing a web site.

Also keep in mind that if you are on a *NIX server, file names are case sensitive - meaning image.JPG is not the same as image.jpg. On a Windows server, it does not matter.