Stock images are photographs, illustrations, computer generated images, and film footage.  Many companies sell these images for personal and commercial use. Some stock image companies have collections of amazing pictures with over a million pieces.  Some are so valuable and delicate that they are housed in a cave 200 ft. below the earth in Iron Mountain in Pennsylvania, where they are refrigerated…now that’s what I would call some cool images!

Finding Stock Images on Online Sites

Most sites offer a search tool to make finding particular images under a certain category quick and easy.  For instance, you can search under photographer, number of people in picture, or angle from above or below.

There are an endless variety of categories of images to search. Each image is labeled with a number of tags, which enable that image to show up when a customer searches using the words in each tag. On the Stock Image Source, we have played the role of picture hunter and collected some examples of images from a number of popular categories: cartoon pictures, pictures of animals, lion pictures, product photography, money images, and glamour images. Follow these links to see the sample images, which you can then purchase from the sites that are selling them.

Buying Images

Before buying or selling an image on one of these sites, it is important to understand two terms so you can determine how you want to purchase the piece of art.  You will find these terms used on each site, so they are important to understand.

Rights Managed (RM):  Rights and fees will be calculated for each project, which is determined by how you want to use the image.

Royalty-Free (RF):  For a one-time flat price images can be used an unlimited number of times.

Owners of Stock Image Sites

There are many sites on which to buy art.  The major stock image sites are owned by individuals or corporations.  For instance, Bill Gates founded Corbis in 1989 because he believed people would put up digital artwork in their homes, while Getty Images is owned by a large corporation.

In conclusion, if you are looking for pictures to buy or sell, you don’t need to visit a bunch of photography studios; instead, you can search for stock images online.  You can view most images on these sites before choosing those that fit your needs.  You can show them to others if you need to before purchasing, and some sites offer a return policy if you decide the image isn’t exactly what you want.

If you would like access to millions of images to buy online, Corbis should be considered.  With millions of stock pictures, video clips and illustrations, Corbis is one of the largest companies in the industry.

Corbis owns several collections including the Sygma Collection and 11 million pieces from the Bettmann Archive.  These collections are refrigerated in a cave, over 200 ft. below ground at Iron Mountain near Pennsylvania.

Images Available

Both creative and editorial images are available.

Creative images include illustrations while editorial includes documentary, current events, entertainment and others.

Documentary photos include pictures of earth and pictures of people.

Pictures of current events include bikini pictures of models on a runway during fashion week.  Or beach photography during an Olympic volleyball game, and other include live satellite images.

There are amazing photos in the entertainment category.  These include Jessica Simpson pictures and Jennifer Aniston pictures as well as other celebrity photos.

Purchasing Images

Today, the Corbis site offers images to purchase. In order to buy art from stock image companies it is important to know two common terms, Rights Managed and Royalty-Free; you can learn about the in our overview of stock images. You must be a member of Corbis to purchase artwork from the company.  It is a quick, easy process to sign-up online.

Other Corbis Companies

Corbis owns a few other companies including Corbis Motion, Veer and GreenLight.

Corbis Motion offers film clips from some of the most prestigious collections and studios around the world, from action packed scenes of helicopters falling to the ground to multicar pile-ups.  You can use high-end footage in your projects without the production costs.

Veer offers affordable stock images.

GreenLight offers rights clearances for celebrities, music, iconic properties and motion clips.  They help take away obstacles so your creative ideas can be produced.

History

Founded by Bill Gates in 1989, because he believed in the future people would put up a revolving display of computer generated artwork using digital frames.

In conclusion, Corbisimages.com is a fascinating site.  If you are looking for images for your company, the site could be an excellent resource for you.

Corbisimages.com, privately owned by Bill Gates, is one of the largest stock image sites on the internet.

Background

Corbisimages.com was founded in 1989.  One major reason Bill Gates started the company was because he believed that homes would one day be decorated with digital artwork in digital frames in a revolving display.

The company was originally founded under the name Interactive Home Sytems but later changed then changed again to its current name, Corbis.  “Corbis” is Latin for “wicker basket”.  This name was chosen because the company saw itself as a warehouse for visual media.

Corbis owns large collections.  One collection, the Bettman Archive, is comprised of 19 million photographs and images, some from the United States Civil War.  Some of the most popular U.S. historic images are also included in the archive.

The Corbis photographic collection is housed at the the Iron Mountain storage area in a former limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania.  The collection is stored in a cave 220 feet below ground.  The cave is refrigerated.

The Website

Gettyimages.com, istockphoto.com, JupiterImages.com and Corbisimages.com are just a few of the many websites that offer stock images and each site offers a fairly easy way to navigate the site through a search tool.  The search tool can find pictures located under even somewhat obscure terms like “picture maker” , “picture hunter” or “stock exchange photos”.  Or more common terms like “3d picture”, “cartoon picture” and “pictures of animals”.

The Corbis search tool is more advanced than seen on most other sites.  One can search under date photographed, location, orientation (horizontal, panorama, and vertical), number of people and even point of view (aerial, close up, above, below, from space).

The difference between Corbisimages.com and most other stock image websites is that it offers a larger collection, millions of images including photographs, videos and illustrations.  Plus Corbis has acquired some of the most valuable image collections.

Corbis offers other sites as well, Corbismotion.com, Veer.com and Greenlight.com.  Corbismotion.com includes editorial and creative motion clips, Veer is a stock image site and GreenLight offers rights clearances for film clips, music, celebrities, etc.

Like other sites Corbis offers rights managed and royalty-free images.  It also offers editorial images like documentary, fine art, current events and entertainment.

In conclusion, Corbisimages.com is a highly recommended site if you are looking for ease of navigation and many images.

There are many online stock image companies on the net.  Gettyimages.com is one of the largest.  One other, CorbisImages.com, is owned by computer billionaire Bill Gates.

Gettyimages.com focuses on the commercial world.  It offers 70 million stock images, like pictures of animals, provocative and hot pictures, pictures of people and other truly amazing pictures for individuals and businesses and 30,000 hours of footage on film.  Getty Images focuses on selling to three population groups: graphic design and advertising professionals, print and web publishing outlets and the corporate world.

To become one of the biggest stock image distribution companies Getty acquired numerous mom-and-pop businesses as well as larger companies.  In a victory for Getty Images, in October 2008 Getty bought, for $96 million in cash, a major competitor, Jupiterimages.  However, in February 2008 Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm, acquired Getty Images for approximately $2.4 billion.

Some of these companies had older photos which has allowed Getty to offer classic material.

Getty has distribution offices around the world.  Their website is their main means of distribution.

Like other online stock image photography and film sites Getty Images has a search program on their site which allows customers to find images based on a variety of factors including subject type like   “celebrity” where one can find Jennifer Aniston photos, category type like “glamour images”, “family photography” and “wedding photography” and location, for instance, “landscape photography”.

Costs of the photographs and illustrations vary based on  resolution and type of rights connected with the image.

In the last couple years there has been controversy about Getty Images and complaints to the company about a change in pricing structure for online image sales.  Now customers are offered a new package where, for $49, they can buy small web images.  This was supposed to be for both rights-managed and royalty-free images even though before the change rights-managed images could bring in much more money.

Gettyimages.com is a site that is easy to navigate but could be overwhelming with the over 50,000 images it offers in its Flickr.com collection.  There are many online stock image sites to choose from including istockphoto.com, photosearch.com, bigstockphoto.com, inmagine.com and Dreamstime.com which also have navigation tools to make your search easy.  It’s fun to look around these sites, to orient yourself with how each works and, of course, peer at the photographic images that are offered.