# Royalty Free stock photo image sites

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-stock-photo-image-sites/514681>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 21, 2009, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-stock-photo-image-sites/514681 "2009-10-21T23:47:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-stock-photo-image-sites/514681/1 "2009-10-21T23:47:29Z")

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When I create my non-commercial artwork using photos, I tend to grab things from any old place online. I change them so much you wouldn’t be able to recognise them anyway, but even so I still restrict that to my amateur work.

As I may start requiring the use of online images for commercial work, I figure I should sign up to stock photo sites, for access to royalty free images. Preferably for free, or a minimal monthly fee, rather than a per-image charge.

Does anyone else use them, and have any recommendations or potential pitfalls?

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**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-stock-photo-image-sites/514681/2 "2009-10-22T00:04:07Z")

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Royalty-free stock photo sites can be an excellent bargain. Usually low-res versions will cost you only a few dimes per image. High-res versions suitable for print work can be more expensive.

The two biggest players are Shutterstock and iStockPhoto, both of which have ginormous collections (with a lot of overlap.)

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**Author:** ![picker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/picker/32/13969_2.png) [@picker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picker)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-stock-photo-image-sites/514681/3 "2009-10-22T00:51:32Z")

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I recommend [stock.xchng](http://www.sxc.hu/) for personal work, and for commercial work I use iStockPhoto, which is piggybacked on stock.xchng. When you search for a pic it gives you results from both sites, so it saves significant time.

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**Author:** ![TheScogg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@TheScogg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheScogg)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-stock-photo-image-sites/514681/4 "2009-10-22T03:50:31Z")

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Like **picker** , I also stock.xchng for royalty free photos. On a somewhat related note, I also have a couple of other sites I use for vector artwork. [VectorPortal.com](http://VectorPortal.com) is great for design elements, templates, symbols and the like. And [brandsoftheworld.com](http://brandsoftheworld.com) has tons of free company logos. This site, I think is possibly “illegal” (at least straddling a grey area), but none of my customers have complained when I used nice vector artwork off that website as opposed to the crappy 72dpi logo off their corporation’s website.