Using other people’s intellectual property is not only ok, it’s necessary in the professional world of graphic design.
WHAT?!
Yes, really.
As much of a purist as I like to be, in the real world I’m finding it’s impossible to design without using other people’s stuff (purchased ligit of course). You simply don’t have the time to stage photo shoots or spend hours crafting the perfect vector in Illustrator.
In school I made all my own everything—took all my own pictures, created all my own vector artwork, just about the only thing I used that I didn’t create was fonts. It was too bad that my professors did not teach me to use stock artwork. If you’re in school, I would strongly advise that you start using stock imagery now; it’s amazing the difference a few high quality photos will make in your designs. iStockPhoto is a great place to start—relatively cheap, definitely royalty free, but still decent quality. If you really can’t afford to buy images, register for a free stock.xchng account. They don’t have nearly the selection, but you will find some decent photos (I often use them for this blog).
Is That Ok?
I was unsure about using other people’s images, too, when I started working. I wondered things like how much credit do I have to give the photographer? How can I say this is my work when those aren’t my pictures?
We had a discussion about it over on Graphic Design Blog and I felt more confident about using stock artwork after that. I know that I don’t have to give a photographer credit—he is dealt with by the stock photography company and he gets paid by them (be careful though because some sites will try to require attribution, though these are usually the free sites). If it still makes you a little uncomfortable, does your conscience make you feel like you have to give credit to the font designer, too? No, well, then think of the photographer the same way (just don’t go claiming their your own images!).
Now it’s practically second nature to source images from stock photography sites and usually much less time-consuming than creating all of my own artwork. Of course, going through 2,000 images from the search results on a stock image site can be time consuming as well! So let me give you a few tips I’ve picked up from searching through so many images.
Sifting Through Images
Most of us have high speed internet access these days, so use it to your advantage by loading the maximum number of images per page that you can.
You also need to narrow down your search results. Most stock image sites will allow you to choose specific options like Vertical or Horizontal Only, Photo Only (as opposed to vectors), Search Only Category and some also let you narrow down the primary color.
Just like searching in Google, alter your search terms for different images. You’ll get different results for black horse vs. dark stallion. If you come up with too many results—I’d say over 300—then try adding more specific terms to your search.
And sometimes, the photographer/artist just doesn’t know how to label their images. I come across so many completely mistagged images. For example, I check the box for the Business category only and it comes up with scantily clad women. I doubt that would be acceptable officewear. I just learn to laugh and move on.
Where Should I Go?
I would say my two favorite stock photography sites are iStockPhoto and Shutterstock. Which you choose depends on how many images you tend to download and what your (or your client’s) budget is.
iStockPhoto uses a credit system; you purchase a number of credits and spend them on image downloads. The number of credits it takes to download an image depends on its size.
Shutterstock is a subscription site that allows you to download 25 images per day, which is a lot. I have a subscription here and I like the variety of images. They are not quite as high of quality as some more expensive stock photography sites, but they are reasonably priced and have a good selection.
One thing I warn you: don’t use the Getty Images subscription—they significantly limit the images you can download (in terms of selection); they are not the same bunch as the royalty free ones you see on their regular site. The nice thing about all the istockphoto and Shutterstock images is that they are royalty free; once you download them, you own them. Graphic Design Blog had a great round up of other stock photography sites that you might be interested in, so be sure to check it out!
What stock image sites do you use? Would you recommend them?
I have a problem with stock photography sites. I can easily spend far too long looking at beautiful photography!
I remember when most of the large companies sent their catalogues out for free. As a budding design student I thought this was amazing, and my mum was always complaining at the piles of stock photography catalogues I’d have everywhere. ;)
David,
Haha, yes, I am like that with the paper samples. We still get a few of the sample books from companies like Jupiter Images, but I think we have to specifically request them. Nice to see you around here again, btw :)
Been a bit busy of late, and even though I haven’t been commenting as much, I’m still enjoying your articles in my feed reader (so you know).
How about the images/photos on the site like Flickr? Free to use as well? There are quite a lot decent ones there.
David,
Glad to know you’re still reading. Same here for your blog
Kent,
Welcome! Always love to meet new commenters! Yes, many of the images on Flickr are free, too; definitely check the copyright and licensing information, though. I’m not sure the ratio of high quality to unusable images, so it may not be worth the time it takes to find the good stuff (but if one has more time than money, that might be a good route to take!). The image quality may be low res, too, which is another thing to be careful of. Do you use Flickr? How do you find the quality?
Yes, I have a pro account in Flickr where I store all my daughter’s pictures in original size. Finding good quality pictures in Flickr isn’t a problem for me. I usually can find what I want pretty quick. Yes, I agree that the quality may not be good enough for real graphic design work but since I only do design for website periodically most of the time the quality of the photos in Flickr is good enough for me to put on web after manipulating a little bit. I think it’s a good place to look at because simply there are just so many people who love to contribute their work there, and a lot of decent ones too.
I really enjoy Lucky Oliver. They have had some minor server issues in the past - which only affected load times, not purchases getting lost.
The one knock I have against it is there isn’t any way for a user to get in touch with a photographer/artist (which they call carnies). I found an artistic style from a particular artist that I really would have liked to get a custom piece done by, but there wasn’t any way short of contacting customer support which is too labour intensive.
Amen Lauren! I remember doing a school sports poster and photoging all the action pictures. I knew about istockphoto, but at the time it seemed anti-“real” design. Now I’m loving the inspiration from that site…
Sounds like your school experience was quite opposite of mine. My first graphic design instructor had no problem with using other people’s work, even without rights. He told us we could just Google whatever we wanted a picture of and as long as the image was of high enough quality, it was fine to use. Fortunately the school hired a new professor (for reasons that had nothing to do with that) who taught us the right way to do things, about legal rights and all that. It was really only in my last year that I started taking my own pictures.
I use Flickr as a stock resource from time to time, and quite often the quality is excellent. You can search images there by license type, which makes things easier. One caveat: the most prevalent license for usage from Flickr is an attribution license; i.e., you have to include a “photo by” caption if you use them.
You know, I’ve often thought of this and didn’t know how others felt about it. Thanks for laying it all out!
I’m a student now and always feel obligated to use my own work in everything that I do, just like you mentioned. I wish my professors would take a few classes to clear up the confusion about the copyright issues that the web involves. This makes me feel alot better about using stock photography, though. Thanks!
I do have a question, though. Are there some licenses where you can use the image, but you don’t have the rights to edit the image (such as the ones that you get on flickr)?
Wow, I never received free stock catalog’s s… didn’t even know they did that. Thanks for the inspiration link back. I tend to use http://www.sxc.hu for most of my stock images (as you probably can tell on my website). I use istock for clients however, especially for models.
stock photography and copyright discussions seem to be always in demand, it’s a hot topic to talk about, and the one that everyone wants to know more about.
Though, I know what you mean…
I don’t think it’s a bad thing that you had to take and create your own photos and illustrations, Lauren. I bet because of that you’ve certainly improved your creative skills.
But I agree, you can get the work done much faster with the stock photography, plus it’s pretty much impossible to take pictures on every topic you need yourself.
For clients and at work I usually use istock and for my blog I use sxc.hu, or sometimes morguefile.com
Hi Lauren, thanks for the mention.I think when you get in the real world everything is time is money - it’s a shame but you just have to use purchased images. I used to do a lot of illustrations in my work but now tend to use purchased photos or vectors.
Istock is still my favourite, but I was amazed at how much the put there prices up recently. Although still incredible cheap the price of a large image went from 6 to 10 credits (£6-£10) an increase of 66% in one go.
I also use http://www.123rf.com which have less pics than istock but are a lot cheaper.
Vivien (ib),
It’s amazing what a difference it can make!
Copyright is a subject everyone especially keen to hear more on because laws can be so dang confusing! I agree, I don’t think it was a bad thing that I practiced taking my own photos and drawing my own illustrations, but I think many of my school projects would’ve benefited from a little professional photography
Tara,
Yeah, time is money, exactly. Unfortunate because we can’t produce exactly what we have in mind sometimes (too much time required), but that’s life! Wow! That’s a huge increase for iStock’s large photos. One reason I really like Shutterstock is that no matter the size, your subscription is a flat rate per month. It varies from photo to photo (depending on the resolution submitted by the photographer), but generally the largest size is at least 18” along its longest edge (300 ppi). Often these images are interpolated up, but they do a pretty good job so there aren’t many artifacts. Sometimes it’s worth it to have accounts with quite a few stock sites, especially if money can be an issue. Have you ever tried Lucky Oliver, the site Jamie mentioned? Oh, and I see that 123RF site has 9,200 free images, too! They’re web res only and the quality isn’t as high, but it’s another resource for bloggers!
No I haven’t. I have heard of it, I will have to take a look.
I quite like stock.xchng, StockXpert, their royalty free counter-part is okay too. I recently paid for a photo there (first time I’ve bought an image) after searching xchng and iStockPhoto and not finding what I wanted. I like iStockPhoto too - haven’t bought anything, but am subscribed to the newsletter and have downloaded a couple of the monthly free ones.
I use Flickr occasionally - Alec mentioned you can search by license. I do that by going to flickr.com/creativecommons…
Skelliewag.org has a page for photo attributions, which I think is a clever way of providing a link attribute without interrupting the flow of your posts or designs.
kristarella,
Can I correct one little thing? Both stock.xchng and StockXpert are royalty free image sites (that means you don’t have to pay every time you use the image), but the StockXpert pics you have to pay for, where xchng images are free. I’m sure that’s what you meant, but I wanted to clarify, just in case
I’m probably one of the few who doesn’t read Skelliewag (have enjoyed her contributions to Freelance Switch though!), but I wonder if that one page counts enough. Do you know if the license specifically says it must accompany the image? I would think it does, and in that case, the one page wouldn’t be following the rule. But if it doesn’t, then that’s a great idea! (sorry to be so critical in this reply… it’s really late and I’m tired and a little grumpy. Off to bed for me now!)
Correct away
I guess I just thought that royalty free applied to the ones you paid for because if the images are free it’s implicit that it’s royalty free… or something like that. Maybe I just didn’t know how to describe it
Just looked up Creative Commons, their licenses for attribution don’t seem to specify where the attribution should be. If you read the commons deed it says that you need to attribute in the manner specified by the author. So I suppose if they didn’t specify how you should link, another page would be okay. However in keeping with the spirit of the license the link to the other page should probably be quite prominent and/or near the image.
Sleep well!
kristarella,
Yah, “royalty free” just means you don’t pay to use it each time, but I can see how you were thinking about it and it does make sense: What is the point of royalty free when it was free to begin with?
Yes, the spirit of the license I think would imply that the link is in proximity to the spot where the image is used. But I suppose a separate page works. Thanks for looking that up!