New digital image library helps photographers

S

Steve

Guest
Fotolia creates library of reasonably priced stock images, and enables photographers and illustrators to market themselves internationally

Photographers and digital artists of all levels will now find promoting and selling their work simpler than ever before, following the launch of Fotolia - the first global 'social marketplace' for digital stock images. Fotolia also gives magazine designers, graphic artists, web designers, and anyone else working in the publishing and creative industries access to a huge global library of royalty free stock images, either for free or starting from as little as £1.

Fotolia, which launched on November 9th, has a revolutionary but elegantly simple business model. Each photograph or illustration submitted to Fotolia is reviewed by Fotolia's editing team and judged for its commercial potential. The Fotolia editing team includes in-house editors and select contributors with professional expertise in photography, graphic design and illustration. This internal approval process provides quick and constructive feedback within 24 hours. Once approved, the creator can decide on the price of their work, ranging from £1 to £100, within the photographer or designer's rank. The ranking system allows for increased revenue potential over time, solely determined on the success of an artist's sales. When images do not meet Fotolia standards, artists have the option of posting their work in the free section of the Fotolia website. This enables the artists to participate in a unique revenue sharing program from advertising and affiliation fees collected by the free section. Unlike competing sites, photographers and designers who use Fotolia will keep all copyrights to their images.

Cutting-edge design

Other collaborative features include: peer feedback through the Academy, the ability to add descriptive concept tags to every image - PLUS a photography and design news blog at http://blog.fotolia.com/uk/

The Fotolia site is built using cutting edge web technologies, such as RSS, to create real-time buyer and seller alerts to match photographers and illustrators with designers' needs, as well as syndication of forum discussions.

Stock image libraries need to be as easy to search as possible, and again, Fotolia is leading the field here. The site use of AJAX technology allows users to zoom in and get a better view of the images before purchase, while DigimarcT protects against circumvention of image licensing. An innovative search by color tool developed by Fotolia also detects dominant hues in every image and allows users to identify photos available within a certain palette.

Fotolia's digital image marketplace is available in French, English, Spanish and German and has already acquired over 100,000 images in its database.

More info: www.fotolia.co.uk


I thought this would be a good opportunity for some of the members here to get a little back from their hobby. I have not used the site personally (I was contacted directly by the site) so can neither recommend nor say anything bad about it. They seem very polite and efficient and I have looked at their business model and it all seems sound.

If any of you sign up, it would be nice to know, and if you could keep me informed of how you get on.
 
Sounds quite interesting, and I'm sure many of us will be looking into it as a platform for that little 'step' into getting something back.
 
If they're on the level, and they seem to be, then it's a great chance for people to test the waters with some of their better stuff. :)
 
Their site is a lot nicer than many I've seen. Clean and simple, pages load fast, design is decent. They seem to be a good bet. May well investigate. Although I did notice this:

Fotolia receives thousands of images per day. While most are very good we would like to discourage members from sending in photos with low market value.

Do not submit fine art images
Not all great photos are good for Fotolia. We have seen some photographers submit images that are a little too artistic for stock photography. While they are wonderful fine art images they will not sell well to our customers. We prefer to receive photos that illustrate a concept or capture a situation as discussed above. We are unfortunately obliged to decline even awesome artistic photos if submitted.

Unwanted Photos
Fotolia is not interested in pictures of the family pet including dogs, cats, ducks, insects ect. In addition pictures of flowers, sunsets, and nature are not needed as well. We are overwhelmed with such pictures already and have no need for more mediocre photos of such subjects.
Click to expand...

Which makes it a bit more tricky. But it's fair enough. No point uploading stuff that won't ever be seen or used.
 
I guess the above is the same for most image banks, they are catering to us, the photographers and also the customers that will be buying our work. The last thing anyone needs when looking for a suitable image for a campaign is to be confronted with hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of family pets and Aunty Mord ;)

Choose what you submit carefully and I can see this being a great opportunity. :thumb:
 
Yeah. Just need to get model releases for everything now :(

Can't see people being too happy about it tbh. "Oh hello, I'm just taking photos and I wonder if you'd permit me to make money out of you without ever paying you a bean?"
 
that does look quite interesting. Might be worth trying a submission, even if it's only for the rejection slip. :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top