Stock photographs are used by businesses to add color and excitement to marketing collateral, presentations, and web sites. Using stock photography allows you to avoid the expense of hiring a photographer, particularly in cases where you cannot easily provide the needed image.

This buying guide is designed to help you decide when stock photography may prove useful in your work. You can choose to read this guide from beginning to end, or jump directly to a section of interest by clicking on the links above.

Sources of Stock Photos

Stock photos are available from three major sources. The traditional source is a stock photography agency. These agencies keep millions of photos of all types on file. Once you describe your needs, the agency can find a particular image that closely matches your specifications. These rights-protected photos are leased by customers for one-time specific use. If you want to continue using the photo you need to re-negotiate with the agency.

A second way of obtaining stock photos is to contact a local photographer. Photographers keep photos from past shoots, and will sell or license these photos for a small fee. Local photographers can be a particularly good source if they specialize in the type of shots you require.

The newest way to obtain stock photos is to purchase digital stock photography. These consist of photograph collections that are stored on CD-ROMs. Digital stock photography is often royalty-free -- you pay a one-time non-negotiable price for the entire CD-ROM collection.

Rights-protected Photos

Despite the higher cost, there are many advantages to using rights-protected photos. Because the vast majority of photos that agencies have on hand are rights-protected, you will have plenty of images to choose from and the work of some of the best photographers at your fingertips.

The customer service team at an agency can also add value to your purchase of rights-protected photos. Agency staff often know their files inside and out and can suggest photos that you may miss when paging through a catalog or searching online. In addition, the best agencies train their staff to be able to guide customers in choosing images that convey powerful messages.

However, the biggest advantage of rights-protected photos is that the agency tracks usage of the photo. This enables you to create a unique look and feel for your marketing materials, and you won't discover later that a competitor is using the same image.

Royalty-free Photos

There is no getting around the fact that many more photographs are currently available from stock photography agencies and local photographers than from CD-ROMs. This means that the traditional channels will continue to be a primary source of photos for a long time.

Nevertheless, digital stock photography has a number of advantages. For one, other than an occasional additional usage fee, anything on the disc is yours to use multiple times.

A second advantage of digital storage is indexing. Although stock agencies may have well-organized files, they cannot let you rummage through them each time you need a photo. In contrast, most CD-ROMs come with a thumbnail viewer, which allows you to quickly scan through small versions of each photo.

The downside of digital stock photography is quality. Although royalty-free photos are constantly improving, top photographers charge a lot for their work, which makes it impractical for CD-ROM publishers to use the best sources for images. However, they should be more than adequate for most business needs.

An additional quality issue is that even CD-ROMs have limited storage capacity. While it is possible to store several hundred high-quality photos on a CD, many contain well over 1,000 images. This means that some CD-ROM images may be unacceptable for high-quality brochures or presentations.

Pricing

Rights-protected photos from stock photography firms are rented on a per-use basis. Most photos cost somewhere between $250-$1,500. Fees typically depend on the image's distribution, size and placement, and intended use. In addition, buyers are billed for researching requests, the right to change or collate images on your computer, and scanning the image.

Royalty-free photos are usually purchased on a CD-ROM at a price that covers the cost of using those images any number of times. Fees range from $10 to $250 per disc, with each CD-ROM holding anywhere from 100 to several thousand images. Additional charges can be incurred when using images for commercial resale, and use is often limited by a licensing agreement.

Buying Tips

Agency Listing
The Picture Agency Council of America lists the specialties of each member stock photography agency in its directory. All members pledge to adhere to a code of ethics, including abiding by copyright regulations and fair business practices. The directory is free. Visit their Web site for more information.

Check Quality Before You Buy
Before you buy an inexpensive photo CD-ROM, be sure to get a sense for the quality of the images. Expensive discs are usually geared for professional designers, while the less expensive discs are targeted at the general public and may have much lower-quality photos.

Use Your Negotiating Power
Many agencies will lower their prices if you are buying multiple rights-protected photos, so whenever possible buy all your photos for a project at the same time and from the same agency. Downloading Options
The web is full of stock photography vendors that allow you to peruse your options, then order, pay for, and download your images. Depending on your situation, some even allow free downloads.