This is a re-posting of Q309262, but made a bit easier by the removal
of a couple of categories.
__________________

We want to start a regular newsletter for our clients, to be sent to a
few hundred email addresses around the world every three months or so.
I'm looking for a good plentiful source of royalty-free photos we can
use to accompany the text. Typically, each photo would be used once
only.  The photos can be online, or purchasable on CD, but they must
have licence terms which allow our intended use (please check this!).

Specific areas which we need images to cover are:

Technology
science
business

Most web sites I've seen so far are incredibly expensive - usually
because they sell very high-resolution pictures designed for print
use.  An example would be

http://www.sciencephoto.com/  (but these are rights-managed, not royalty-free)

Some are cheaper, and are subscription-based,  but have little to
choose from in the areas of interest. An example of that would be

http://www.webspice.com/

Some sites even provide free images, but again have very few that are
in useful fields.

Because the images we need will be embedded in a mailshot that will be
going out by email, very high resolution is not needed, and indeed
would probably make the emails too big anyway.

The best site I've seen so far is the royalty-free part of the collection at

http://www.comstock.com/

but this still sells its smallest royalty-fee images at £33 each,
which is quite a bit as we will need 5 or 6 per issue.  The collection
CDs they sell are much cheaper per image, but since we will need a
wide field to choose from we'd have to buy a lot of CDs to cover the
range.

Can you find some cheaper options for me that still have plenty of
images to choose from - eg more than 100 in each category? (sites
having for example just 10 or 20 'business' pictures are no good, but of
course I understand that I may need to use different search terms from
those mentioned above: each site will index its images differently. 
Business images might for example come under 'office', science under
'physics' and so on).

Michael2

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 25 Feb 2004 00:02 PST

Hello Michael2,
I've been doing some searching on this question too. I found only very
few royalty-free sites (around 5) with cheap photos (around $5 per
photo, one even claims $2), and the variety seems adequate for your
needs. Do you feel you need more sites or would this be enough? Just
let me know.

---

Clarification of Question by michael2-ga on 25 Feb 2004 01:35 PST

That would be enough, thanks.

Hello Michael2,
I'm glad to be able to help you again on another question. Thanks also
for allowing me to post here too.
I've searched through as many resources of royalty-free stock photos,
and these are what I've come up with. I'm confident that I've found
the least expensive sources, since most of the rest have mostly
professional-quality photographs of large filesizes that cost a lot
more than the $33 you mentioned. Anyway, here are my finds:


Intuitivmedia.net: source of royalty free photography
http://www.intuitivmedia.net/pro/index.php
- $5.95 per image, $20 for 5 images. This looks like the cheapest.

We sell images - Hemera.com - Royalty Free Images on CD, DVD or
through Subscriptions!
http://www.hemera.com/hemera/index.jsp;jsessionid=aShDcEYj0bfh?ref=
- They have a five images for $4.95 promo. 10,000 images available.

Stock images by Krave Designs
http://www.ikrave.com/stockimages/
- Lowest price if $4.95 a photo, 600k size, 72 ppi.

The Picture Zone, High Resolution Royalty Free photos only $2.95,
unique Photo Objects, Photo Art and Panoramas
http://www.inzones.com/picturezone/
- Cheap place for photos, but I'm not sure about the variety.

ROYALTY FREE PHOTOS: Stock Photography and Royalty-Free Digital Stock
Photography plus Glamour and Fine Art Nudes
http://www.royaltyfreephotos.com/
- 2" by 3" at 72 dpi costs $8.95, 5" by 7.5" at 72 dpi costs $19.95

Lulu Images: Affordable Stock Photography Photos
http://images.lulu.com/
- Lowest priced image I saw was $12, though most around $15-$30.

Seattle Support Group stock photography, royalty free photos
http://www.ssgrp.com/Home.html
- 640 x 480 size photo costs $6.95; 800 x 600 photo costs $9.95. All at 72 dpi.

iStockphoto.com - royalty free stock photography community
http://www.istockphoto.com/
- This site handles purchases using credits. Lowest is $10 for 20
credits. I'm not sure though how the credits translate into photos.



Less likely choices:
(I included these since they are not as cheap as the ones above, but
you might be interested to look them up. There are some I couldn't
find pricing for, so I included them in case you could find out)

Pictures Now > Stock Images > Pictures include photos and illustrations
http://picturesnow.com/html/index.htm
- Different prices for 1. Personal Use, $5.99; Prof use, $19.99

Photovault Prices and Licensing
http://www.photovault.com/Link/index.images/PHOTOVAULTPricing.html
- Pricing seems to be for batches here. It seems to have a lot of pics, though.

PhotoSpin royalty-free photography, video, animations, audio and fonts
http://www.photospin.com/
- Free trial for 100 images. $149 a year gets you 40,000 images. 
- I'll repeat this from the last result for an in-case reference.

Stock Photography Online by media Focus LLC
http://www.mediafocus.com/browse2.html
- I'll just say that this is expensive. 

Picturestation | Royalty-free pictures | Download + share images |
virtual photo community | since 1999
http://www.picturestation.net/start/
- Can't see pictures without having an account.

Creativestock - royalty free stock photography
http://imagedisk.com.au/idp/image_specs.html
- This is priced in Australian dollars and purchased per megabyte. 1 MB = Au$60.

ImageState Homepage
http://www.imagestate.com/welcome_index_html
- Cheapest is $49 for a 1.1 MB TIFF image. 

Digital image library - Stockbyte
http://www.stockbyte.com/
- I couldn't find pricing 

PhotoAlto: digital resources, high-quality photo library on CD and online:
http://www.photoalto.com
PhotoAlto Price List
http://www.photoalto.com/pages/price.lasso?-session=SID:59E7E28526554A0458031CD3BD57F89C
- 360 Kb, 72 dpi, 297 x 420 picture is Free. But the price for the
next largest pic is 95 Euro.

Welcome to s t o c k P H O T I Q U E
http://www.stockphotique.com/
- $19.95 for all royalty-free photos.



General Lists:
Links for Stock and Royalty Free Photos
http://www.photosecrets.com/links.stock.html
- Lists a lot of good sites for Stock phots and royalty-free photos.

Stock Photo Agency Information at Business.com
http://www.business.com/directory/media_and_entertainment/photography/stock_photography/

ArtYears.com l EXCLUSIVE | Stock Libraries
http://www.artyears.com/exclusive/stocklibs.html
- List of stock photo libraries, both free and royalty-free.

Free Images - Photos
http://www.freeimages.com/photos.php
- Lists some free and royalty-free photo sites. 

Stock Photography Resources on the Web
http://www.prophotos.net/pm_stock.html

Pacific Web Effects - STOCK IMAGES, Web Tools, Web Effects, Website Tutorials
http://www.pacificwebeffects.com/webtoolsdirectory/stock-images-graphics.html



Other:
Allroyaltyfree.com - search engine for royalty-free images
http://www.allroyaltyfree.com/A/Default.asp


Google Search term used:
royalty free stock photo
free stock photo
free stock images

I hope this has been a most helpful answer. If you need anything else,
or have a problem with the answer, do please post a Request for
Clarification before rating and I shall respond as soon as I can.
Thank you.

Excellent stuff.

Thanks again for a great rating and a tip!