Image Libraries: The way to find great images online
If you fancy a great print, poster, canvas wrap, photographic print, banner or any other quality graphics product then you may find this page of interest. If you don't have your own image(s) then this page will give you some useful info about finding high quality images. Most are perfectly suitable for the production of high quality prints on various materials.
Not recommended! Most people, when looking for images online, head straight for Google Image Search. It's an amazing resource but there are a few major pitfalls with this. Firstly there are copyright issues which may affect the use of certain images, but the biggest problem is often the quality of images. Google offers Image Search as a reference tool only - the images are by no means of a high enough standard to produce large high quality prints. In almost every case, the images Google finds are images from websites, not from high quality image libraries, which is what we really need when we produce graphics products.
Highly recommended! Dreamstime is Absolute Graphix library of choice. By exploring Dreamstime you will be able to find virtually any type of royalty-free image to suit any environment - home, office, retail, pub, museum, in fact anywhere. Dreamstime images must be paid for, but they are generally well-priced and the high quality versions tend to be extremely good.
Big Stock Photo is a huge site packed full of royalty-free photos and collections. It's pretty easy to navigate and you can buy photos fairly cheaply.
iStock Photo is a terrific resource aimed more at professional users and offers a wide range of goods alongside an impressive royalty-free and rights-managed image library. Images can be more expensive than on other websites, but they are always excellent quality, and work very well in production applications. Recommended for more serious image users rather than casual users.
Finding more...
Of course, there are thousands of good quality image libraries out there covering almost everything. We simply wanted to point you to a few popuar ones to get your started. You can Google "stock image library" or "photo library" to find plenty of alternatives.
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