Hello,

I was just wondering if anyone is satisfied with, or at least knows any places where we can get free, royaltiy-free photos, icons and images.

A Google search brings up some sites, but are there any sites that anyone here would recommend?

TIP: For asthetic purposes, it's good to have pictures throughout your ebook.

No. Never been satisfied with the free stuff.

Just pay a few bucks at Stock Photography: Search Royalty Free Images & Photos | iStockphoto.com or Royalty Free Stock Photos at Fotolia.com and get something with a resolution high enough that you can use it in print if you want.

Thanks. I'll take your recommendations into consideration.

TGW,

I've found the following to be useful photo sites at times:

1. Stock.Xchng: www.sxc.hu -- billed as "the leading free stock photography website" -- and most have little or no usage restrictions
2. morgueFile: www.morguefile.com -- contains high resolution digital free stock photography for either corporate or public use

Sometimes I'll search public sources for photo ideas and then create keywords to search through the offerings on the above sites (eg Wikipedia, Webshots, Flickr, Google Image search -- sometimes gets me thinking of a particular shot I want). I have a few pics on stock.xchng, but not many. Still, they've had a few thousand downloads, so at least I can give back to a good resource!

Otherwise, yes, micro-payment sites are what I turn to next... iStockPhoto, Dreamstime (my favourite, www.dreamstime.com), BigStockPhoto, Fotalia, 123rf.com, CanStockPhoto). I find pricing is better on Dreamstime than iStockPhoto -- personal preference.

Clipart, I don't really have free sources. I used to use clipart.com when I needed it, and charged it to the relevant project.

Icons -- some font collections have great icons -- the fonts on www.dafont.com are very well categorised to check out what's available.

Kind regards,
Dean

Hi Dean,
I use Google News Alerts for anything to do with stock photography as that's my passion... Well, not so much the 'stock' as the 'photography'.
I saw your thread there in my Alerts and ended up joining this site/forum.
I was so peeved with prices Getty and a few other agebncies were charging some years back when there was little other choice, that I started my own library. There were a few microstock libraries but few and the quality was terrible mostly. I decided to try and bridge the gap and opposed to rates that got more expensive dependent on how the image was used, ie; front cover or inside page somewhere, full page, 1/4 page, 100 print run for internal use, 200,00 run magazine... I set a flat rate for however the image was used.
It became popular and then I began receiving emails and phone calls from other photographers who were suffering due to the digital era and the web becoming swamped with microstock libraries. First off, I didn't really want the responsibility (the paperwork) involved with displaying other photographers work... but as time went on, I could no longer ignore some of the fantastic quality and composition submitted by photographers from all around the worl.
I compromised and now have a small number of contributing photographers numbering 16 (I think?).
My site's Rights Managed Stock Photos / Photography :: PIC :: Original Stock Photography :: Rights Managed :: Royalty Free :: Stock Photos :: Royalty-Free :: Rights Managed :: Rights-Managed :: Stock Photo Archive :: Stock Photo Images and the medium res' images at around 600 x 400 pixels are free to use for personal use and free to charities and educational organisations etc.
I try to apply a subscription for unlimited use of as many images as you like for commercial use, which is £40.00 / $80.00 USD per year and that helps support the running of the site as I don't take commission for other photographers work sold through my site.
I think I've turned this quick reply into something I might have posted!
Although some other stock photo libraries have been mentioned on this thread, I'd like to point out that the majority of photos at my site were and are taken on traditional transparency fil, Fuji Velvia no less and drum scanned.
People may say film is dead.... but they seem to be celebrating a loss in quality for immediacy?
I use both film (for as long as I can) and digital and even my Nikon D2x gets nowhere near Velvia slide film. If I were photographing a wedding, I'd still use my medium format Mamiya AF with Velvia!
I digress and maybe this last part would make for another thread???
I'd better stop now!
Cheers
Neil ( neiljb )

Thanks for the info Neil, I've added your site to my folder of starting points for research.

From a copywriting/desktop publishing point of view, your kind of pricing model is still very attractive for the type of projects I'd do -- and can see again how having that resource can be easily costed in to a project. My only feedback on something similar in pricing would be AbsolutVision -- I tend not to use that any more (had a US$80/annual subscription in the past) because of the size of the library and regularity of additions and the type of stock they added: mostly stuff I'd never use. I did used to subscribe to photos.com too for US$399/annually, but find I don't need to spend that much now with micro-options..

But adding things like RM, at an excellent rate, and also exclusive use periods adds another level of attraction for certain projects. And drum scans off film: I'd be making a song and dance about quality issues -- compare "apples to oranges" and then show how you compares to places like Getty rather than iStockPhoto! All of that adds up to be a resource that's different from both ends of the spectrum, so I guess that can give you good positioning.

Personally, I'd also take at least a 5% sales commission, but everyone's different!

Cheers,