[calimehtar]

Somehow I've managed to go all these years using practically no stock photos. Sometimes I use stock already purchased by the company, but in most cases I either don't need it (designing applications and news websites that are better without), or else get my photos first-hand (I, my client, or the client's photographer shoots them).

So now I'm looking for a marketing site, a company without ready access to photos and needing photos that I can't easily provide. started at Gettyimages.com and saw them priced at $1000+ for the uses I want and even then it's restricted to 5 years. The second place I went is charging 75 Euros per photo. A bit more reasonable I guess, with no usage restrictions that I could ifnd. But still, it hardly seems worth paying that much for a photo I'll use at a fairly small size and likely never use again.

Can I buy stock the way I buy fonts - get a collection at a reasonable price that I can re-use on future projects? Or better yet, are there places I can get free images? In my search I had better luck with Google's image search than Getty, and most of the photos I turned up were by amateurs with no usage policies. Yet another reason paying $1K for a photo seems ridiculous.

[andi*pandi]

corel does a clip art collection, like if you need basics like an apple or something.

http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/ec...pn=2&sid=11552

here's a few more image sites other than getty/photodisc... you can search photodisc for certain "levels" (budget)

http://www.agefotostock.com/age/ingles/home01b.asp

www.veer.com

[Mr Heliums]

By the sound of it, you're looking at rights-managed images. You can get royalty free images from Getty/Photodisc, which don't carry these restrictions.

[Thorzdad]

I've been a fan of veer.com.
They seem to have a nice selection of more unique, contemporary styles.

[Macola]

Royalty-free images at gettyone.com are much cheaper. You can get a file suitable for 8.5 x 11 print for about $300 or less.

Edit: If you're looking for lower res, a great exchange site is http://www.sxc.hu/ although the server tends to be a bit slow.

[birdman]

As someone else said, when you search Getty Images, un-check the box next to "rights-managed". I don't even bother searching rights-managed images because the pricing is so ridiculous, and as you said, the license only lasts five years. But Getty has a very wide selection of "royalty-free" images as well, most of which are $180, but some are as low as $99 or as high as $270. The Getty license allows for royalty-free images to be used on a wide variety of products for an unlimited amount of time.

When you find an image you like, scroll to the bottom, where it shows what CD collection the image is from -- many times, you can purchase the entire CD (usually about 40-50 images) for about $500, depending on what resolution you need. This way, you'll have all those images at your disposal and can download them from Getty as you need them (or you can have them send you an actual CD). Even if you only use three images from that CD collection, you've saved money.

Another site to check is Corbis.com. Similarly, don't bother searching rights-managed imagery unless you absolutely have to.

-birdman

[Eyenovation]

istockphoto.com is also a terrific exchange image resource.

For good royalty free stuff, I like -
http://www.picturequest.com/

[mitchell_pgh]

Veer CDs are a good deal... my company has a few royalty free CDs from them.