With the winter holidays at hand, people enjoy familiar sights and images that recreate the holiday season’s bearings. For designers, advertisers and publishers, the whole wintertime setting heralds a great opportunity to draw in more clients, by using themed images in their projects. This is a list of the ten most laudable microstock agencies of winter, 2013.
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The crowned leader this winter is YAY. This stock photo agency makes available over 4 million ravishing images with three main plans – Streaming, Digital, or Print – all perfectly crafted to meet the needs of creative professionals in any given setting. All three subscription options allow users to take files limitlessly, then edit and filter them onsite, and finally they can also be hosted by YAY.
If you embark on a simple search for ‘winter’ items, over 150.000 rich findings show up, and what’s amazing about a YAY search is that, as something grabs your attention, you can look for images that are similar to it – so that there is no room for doubts as you’re making the best possible decision. Well, they don’t call it ‘Spotify for images’ for naught. Presently, new users can save up to 50% off the first month of any subscription plan by using the coupon code ‘XMAS_GIFT’.
The two Digital and Streaming options meet designers’ and publishers’ needs for online use of images. In the case of Digital, for just $49.90/month, you can download as many 3 mexapixel images as you want to use – in apps, e-books, or PowerPoints. Streaming is for online use: at the modest monthly rate of $9.90, bloggers and website owners may publish 700 pixels wide/high images just by pasting the generated link with your chosen stock photos directly in the articles, as YAY pledges to host them in your stead.
Mostphotos ranks high in my preferences for stock photo sources in this season. This agency lovingly embraces 10.000 new items each and every day, and makes a point of accepting local and genuine images from all around the world. Mostphotos is adamant about working both with professional and hobby photographers who contribute their most inspired works to the general abundance that now went past the figure of 5 and a half million.
Mostphotos has no shortage of festive gems. If you should punch in ‘winter’ in the search bar, behold the gorgeous 100.000 vectors and photos that appear before you. With the special feature, you can zoom in down to the last pixel and ascertain the quality of an image before sealing the deal.
In addition, Mostphotos is perfect for teams, because once someone set up an individual account, the rest of her/his team get theirs free of charge. Finally, you may like to hurry and claim the special discounts attached to the subscription plans ‘Mini 10’ and ‘Mini 20’: 10% off if signed for 6 months right from the start, and 15% for a whole year.
Stocksy is undoubtedly in my top three agencies of all time, all the more now that the winter holidays are close at hand. Once you catch sight of the ‘Holidays’ and ‘Celebrate’ collections, you’ll be totally spellbound. The images that form up these two sections look unnaturally crisp and beautiful even for practiced eyes, and you can’t help but wonder at their overall awesomeness. Any of them is definitely worth including in your ‘Christmas shopping’ list – the prices are as low as $10 for an individual royalty-free license.
Stocksy United has 100% exclusive content, and anyone can tell that it just doesn’t look like you’re browsing through a stock image site, but instead it’s as though you’ve accidentally bumped into a high-ranking professional photography venue. The reason behind this singularity is Stocksy’s structure and the thorough selection process: the co-operative run by its artists is very keen on handpicking and accepting only works that have a high aesthetic value. Because mediocre submissions are never accepted, you won’t ever have to spend time singling out the best-looking items, so you’ll find what you need really fast.
When it comes to royalty-free creative images, Getty Images is a preeminent source. Everyone has heard of it. Now that Christmas and the New Year are looming ever closer, any visitor who comes to investigate will come across at least 65.000 winter holiday-related items. The highly refined search features are certain to help you find an ideal royalty-free image.
iStock by Getty Images has a longstanding reputation of being the first ever stock photo agency on the web. If you peruse its intricate search tools to search for images that refer to the holidays, I suggest you look at the results gathered in Editors’ Pick – as almost 20.000 glorious recommendations are placed there for your delight.
21.000 contributors add to Can Stock Photo’s archive of extremely good-looking royalty-free photos, videos and illustrations. At this phenomenal rate, it comes as no surprise that the forthcoming Christmas holidays are mirrored in the well over 480.000 search results, so there are plenty of files to choose from.
Inmagine really makes the grade this season. I tried to run a search for Christmas-specific images, and it turned out more than 66.000 photos and illustrations. What is more, if you go through the search results and find a particularly attractive image, you can take your mouse over it and look for similar content.
Depositphotos has a plump database of 19 million files and is, without question, one of the most generous stock image agencies out there. Did you know that, whenever a user signs up, she/he automatically becomes eligible to receive a free weekly treat from the agency’s Vectors Collection? Notwithstanding these giveaways, Depositphotos maintains another, very pleasing tradition. I am referring to the Sales Lightboxes, which come alive with 20% discounts to season-specific creative assets; for example, this year’s Christmas Lightbox presently offers 925 photos and vectors on sale. Hence, it’s a perfect place to shop over the winter.
Stockfresh is more than welcome to join my list of 10 most wanted microstock sources. Searching this site comes easy, and out of the agency’s database of 3 million photos, vectors, and graphics, a ‘Christmas’ quarry brought about no less than 127.000 results. As you can see, there are plenty of items to look through when you need to insert a Santa Clause image in one of your projects.
Registered users of Shutterstock get one free vector, as well as one free photo, each and every week. If that’s not enough of a reason to mind Shutterstock this winter season, consider the colossal amount of royalty-free stock files it has so far pieced together (30 million items). It would be virtually impossible not to come across some very appealing images.
Below you can see some gorgeous examples of stock photos that you can purchase from the agencies.
YAYImages.com
Mostphotos.com
Stocksy.com
Depositphotos.com
Stockfresh.com
