Using Stock Photos in Your Designs
November 13, 2009 – 1:28 am
Ever visualized Website Designs without images? It’s just like a body without soul. Using images for websites is a great way to feed your audience with information, allowing them to visualize the aspects that sometime words can’t express. Usage of appropriate images creates immense difference as it confirms what you are selling is for real.Images that illustrate the subjects, tempt the user to click-on further and navigate your website leading to enhance conversion rate. This article will capture all such vital aspects including how to make images work for you, how to choose an appropriate image across the web of stock photo websites.There was a time when one needed a photographer to get images for website, but with the introduction of Stock Photo Websites it becomes a handy task for designers to choose images of their taste without any hassle and moreover they come at an affordable price.Choosing images for the first-time-user can get little tricky, because it may not fit into the context of the site just by an overview. Initial step is to download comp image (A comp image is an image used for layout and composition purposes or in simple language we can call it the draft image with watermark). Before we proceed further, following are some of the basic steps to select appropriate photos for your mock.While selecting an appropriate photo, look for:
Understanding Brand Identity of the Company Readers are leaders. Same applies for Designing Websites. If you are not aware about the company’s identity, their area of operations & past – then it would be an uphill task to hunt images over stock photo websites. Studying brand identity is very crucial to be able to specify a goal and mindset when searching for particular image that suits the look and feel and overall treatment of the brand. Understanding the brand aids you to make unique choices of the images that will engage people and create everlasting impression of the brand associated with the product.Finding the Right ImageFinding the Right Image is the key to great website design layouts. The first thing to do is to decide what the image should contain. For example people, objects, landscapes, abstract shapes, bold colors, words or maybe a combination of these. If you don’t have a clue, get inspiration by taking keywords from your content and doing an image search with Google Image Search (Google Search is just for the reference, avoid using images as they might be copyright protected, most of the images are optimized for the web and are of average quality.)The subject should reflect the content in a way that it almost acts as a summary. Sometimes even a metaphorical message can work well; you may know the phrase “a picture speaks a thousand words”… just don’t be too clever or subtle, as the message can easily be missed. The most important thing to do is avoid stereotypical or clichéd imagery; it’s a fine line that separates a tired cliché and a clever metaphor.What happens if you don’t get the Image of your choice?If you’ve worked out what you need but just can’t find anything satisfactory, don’t worry, there are more options, Be Creative is the answer! Never ever expect to get exact search results that are inside your Core2 Duo processor (brain
Check the Image LicenseIt’s imperetive to check the image license. The images uploaded on stock photo websites are protected by International Copyright Law. Designers are advised to purchase images from these websites to avoid any legal conflicts on later stages as this can create a great hassle for the owner website owner.Most stock images have an associated license, usually to protect the photographer’s rights. Some images you will pay for once and are free to use (this is referred to as royalty-free), some will require an attribution credit while others may demand a royalty payment, usually dependent on how you use the image yourself. For most web projects, you should find royalty-free images are the norm. Just make sure you don’t purchase an image without understanding the terms and conditions associated with it first.Once you’re happy with the image, you can go ahead and download it. Stock images come in various dimensions and resolutions; the larger it is the more expensive it will be, so only buy the size and resolution you need. For example, there’s no need to pay for 300 dpi resolution when you only need 72 dpi (72 dpi is perfect for the web while 300 dpi is better suited for print).How can they figure out the usage of Stock Photos without information? Interesting Question and answer is Pic Scout. Pic Scout is is the worldwide leader in image tracking and enabler of client image monetization services. Through its proprietary and highly scalable image recognition technology, PicScout created the image copyright protection marketplace through its widely used ImageTracker™ product and is now leading the way for image commerce to become a legitimate Internet economy.For More Information visit http://www.picscout.com/ |
) probably you’ll not get the exact composition of the businessman in dark suit with champagne bottle standing on beach. It would be great to search for some individual photographs i.e Business man in suit, champagne bottle and beach. Using an image editing program, you can join two stock images together to create a brand new composition. You could even add a filter to enhance the appearance.Treatments for imagesThe initial format of the images used for design mocks are either watermarked or bear low quality. It’s a good practice to remove watermarks by using image editing software i.e Adobe Photoshop (Stamp Tools) and you can also play with brightness and contrast of the image to make it compatible for your design.Where to Look for Stock PhotosThere’s many stock image vendors out there, some free, some pay-per-image, some subscription-based and some who offer all these options. Here’s a listing some of the ones we use and recommend:
2 Responses to “Using Stock Photos in Your Designs”
That was really fantastic and I thank you very much for sharing and I am really glad.
By Charles on Dec 10, 2009
Thanks a lot Charles!! Keep visiting our blog section for latest updates!!
By Manoj Kandwal on Dec 10, 2009