The following article is a list of photo resources that we use on a regular basis. We do not have any affiliation with the companies, but like to use them from time to time.
As a media company, we quite often need visual aspects to our productions and although we provide a large stock of royalty free music and sound effects, we do not have any visual content so we have to source it from elsewhere.
When clients ask about stock photos we send them to these sites:
Fotolia
This is a source of premium content including photo images, graphics and video. It is ideal for marketing / digital agencies.
If you are using the content for the web the prices are reasonable too. Images cost from £0.63 for web use.
If you are making HD videos then you will need to have a reasonable budget, short 10-20 second videos seem to be in the £30-£50 region. It is not unreasonable for the quality but you just need to be aware that adding lots of these stock video clips will add a few hundred pound or dollars to your overall budget requirement.
ClipArt.com
If you are looking to create presentations, and want to be more budget conscious then this site might be for you. It is subscription based and there is seemingly no limit to the amount of photos, illustrations, animations and fonts you can download. A yearly subscription to this site is £68
The Animation Factory
The animation factory is similar to clipart.com but focusses on PowerPoint templates, video backgrounds, and animated clipart. Again, this is for users with a lower budget with a yearly subscription starting at $59.
http://www.animationfactory.com/en/
Stock Exchange
This site offers totally free stock images. Granted, the quality is not as good as the paid for ones and there is less choice, but, for free you cannot really grumble. If you have no budget and wish to use images this site is worth a look.
More Free Photos
In addition to these, I know of this link on Photoshop support for free stock photos. I have not used any of these on the list but it may be worth a look if you are strapped for cash and in need of images.
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/resources/stock-photos.html
I hope you found this useful, please share this post and feel free to add a comment about your experiences and preferences.
Dear Lee, We’d like to have http://www.SchoolPhotoProject.com included in this list as well. We are a free stock photo site that make good quality photos available for students and public in general. Big photo files, up to 4000 pixels in size are available to download. New free photos are uploaded daily. Thank you!
A good alternative to sxc is http://www.rgbstock.com/
ezMediArt.com is another royalty free media resource.
Thanks for the list and descriptions of the sites. Also, thanks for pointing out that stock images are not always free. They also my have certain licensing restrictions. It is always good to know what you are using and if you are authorized to use it for your intended purpose. Here is a great resource to help you know what licensing type you have and what it allows you to use the image for: http://www.coreldraw.com/us/pages/royalty-free-images/.
It has some good info in there, and also some other good royalty free image websites.
Thanks again for the post. It is always great to find new places to get fresh new content for my work.