Image Buyers Guide
Licensing images has never been easier or more affordable. With the new rise of microstock photography websites, you can quickly find an image you need at a price point that fits withing your budget.
This quick guide is meant to give an overview of the top microstock photography website. Even though the various sites offer a similar product, they differ in a number of ways, giving appeal to different buyers.
If you are a photographer, you may want to refer to the Microstock Photographers Guide
Top Microstock Photography Websites
Shutterstock
Shutterstock is a company primarily focused on catering to the big business image buyers. If that sounds like you, one of Shutterstocks subscription packages should suite your needs quite well. Shutterstock was the first microstock photography website to sell via the subscription method and has tweaked their system to become a very efficient and simple solution. Shutterstock has a number of different pricing plans, with the largest packages becoming a very economical per image price.
Crestock
Crestock is a relatively new site in the microstock market but has allready claimed it’s stake with a beautifully designed site and a database of images whose quality is among the best. Crestock’s strict review process creates a challenge for photographers getting pictures online, but in turn, creates an elite catalog of images for the photo buyer to choose from. Searching for and buying images at creastock is a pleasurable experience.
iStockphoto
You can hardly mention microstock without a reference to iStockphoto. iStock was the pioneer of the microstock photography model and continues to be one of the top agencies. iStock has a unique search and keyword tool which you either love or hate. :) iStock also has one of the most adtive online communities garnering it’s strength from a large following of exclusive contributors.
Dreamstime
Dreamstime is a solid company and one of the oldest microstock agencies. Dreamstime gives a fair 50% cut to the photographer, so when you buy here, you know you are making the suppliers happy, and encouraging their work. Dreamstime’s site is very elegantly laid out and simple to use. The site is designed to serve both the buyer need a single image as well as the media giant need thousands of images a year.
Fotolia
Fotolia is a quickly growing company with a large customer base all over the world. Their image database is one of the largest in the industry and growing rapidly.