My Corner Online

 

 

SET ONE

Lesson 16 - Stock Photos

This may be a surprise lesson to you that you do not anticipate, but this lesson is on using stock photos.

Many Designers purchase stock photos that are copyright friendly in order to create their designs.

A controversial topic is that CT (creative team) layouts often utilize stock photos also.

Stock photos are also great for blog post images for those who blog often.

iSockphoto (http://www.istockphoto.com/) is a quality place to purchase images. To purchase photos at iStockphoto, most will choose the pay-as-you-go method by purchasing the minimum of 12 credits for $18.24 ($1.52 per credit). Photos range from 1 to 25 credits depending on their size. Vector illustrations, videos, and audio are also available for purchase. 

I believe that some purchasers of kits may be surprised at how many things are not created from scratch in the digital scrapbooking kits that are purchased. In addition, if you are stuck for ideas, just search through the site without purchasing and you are sure to be inspired.

MorgueFile (http://morguefile.com/) is another great place to find stock photos.

This site is totally free.

http://www.freepixels.com/

For instance, here is a freebie I made for you that was created with two images that are totally royalty free for commercial use.

Download

In addition, a site that was not available to us when I first started digital scrapbooking, but is now a huge resource, isFlickr. When searching for images to utilize, click on advanced search and look for the boxes to enable searching by creative commons.

Once you find an image, be sure to scroll down in the sidebar of that image and click to read that owner's specific creative commons license. Many of them will allow you to modify the image commercially, but will also require you to attribute that image in your TOU's. Here is a one page that you may view the license available at Flickr.

I am going to guess that this opens up whole new worlds for some of you!

Even if you do not sell your designs, but are just looking for something for your own layouts, these are awesome resources!

THE ASSIGNMENT:
Download stock photos and create something (a design) with them. 
Remember:
1. Often you cannot just extract the item and share it as is; the TOU's require you to change it in someway so that you are not just redistributing the original.
2. Give attribution in your TOU's should that be required.

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PS, if you use anything in a layout that is a stock photo, please do share here as we love inspiration too!

 

Here are your stock photo creations!