The Benefits of Paid vs. Free Stock Images

The Benefits of Paid vs. Free Stock Images

The biggest reason to use paid stock photography is quality. It’s hard to even compare the quality of an iStock image against free competitors. Images are available in a number of sizes and are usable for any project type – even print projects. Most free stock image sites only provide web-sized options.
You are more likely to find a photo that’s a better fit to your identity and hopefully one that won’t be the main photo used for a competing project because iStock has so many options. The database is large and contains some pretty specific imagery.
Search “Nashville, Tennessee,” for example and you’ll get plenty of options that are geography specific. This is a detail that is hard to find anywhere else and really can help you find images that connect to your precise audience, business or location.

Paid Stock Pros

  • Upfront licensing. You know the photo is yours to use and how it can be used without worrying about copyright issues. (Just because you search “free” and photo does not mean you can actually use it.)
  • Flexibility. Because you can download large files, there’s plenty of room to crop and adjust the images to meet your needs.
  • Create consistent branding with images. Once you buy a photo from iStock, it is yours to use in pretty much any project, including advertising, marketing, apps, websites, social media, TV and film, presentations, newspapers, magazines and books, and product packaging, among hundreds of other uses for personal or business purposes. (See the licensing page for complete terms.)
  • Legal guarantee. iStock images come with a $10,000 legal guarantee that when you use content within the terms of the license agreement, it won’t infringe on any copyright, moral right, trademark or other intellectual property right or violate any right of privacy or publicity.
  • Ease of use. With a subscription plan, images are available right at your fingertips. You can download at any time and previous purchases are saved in your iStock account for easy access.

Here’s a quick list of clichés to avoid:

  • Business handshake with no bodies attached
  • Group of business people in suits
  • Fake financial graph or chart
  • Person on no background pointing at something
  • Bizarre facial expressions
  • The “too sexy” person doing something
  • People doing things unnaturally (person running through a field in a suit)
  • Words on road signs that don’t belong
  • Clip art
Too many free stock photography sites are filled with this these types of photos. But not iStock, which makes it easy to find cool imagery without a cliché feel.
Look at the photo above. It’s one the first page of results when you search “business.” Note the modern look and feel of the image, great lighting, cropping and color. This is a major improvement over the images you find with from searching “business photo” on Google.

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