The other day i logged onto istockphoto to buy some images and i was infuriated by the fact that they have put their prices up by 100%. Great for the shareholders and Getty Images (spit!) - but not so great for small business web designers like me. to buy 10 credits it now costs £13.00! so each image is costing ,more than £1.00 each for x-small and £3.00 for a larger image for headers etc.

I would love to know how they think that they can get away with this and i actually feel betrayed , having purchased hundreds of images over the last few years.
Ok a price increase of maybe 25% would have hurt a bit - but 100%+???!!! Absolutley disgusting.

I would be interested in knowing other peoples thoughts on this matter - and wondered if anyone has any good suggestions for an alternative that is not owned or affiliated to Getty.

One other thing to throw into this, even with istock it was always difficult to get UK based images - as in pictures of construction/houses/ debt/ mortgages etc... that reflected UK style - not American - and wondered if anyone knows of a decent stock photo site that has more UK based images.
Obviosuly i am aware of the likes of stock.xchng - but many of the free images here are a bit long in the tooth and they seem to now be affiliated to istock / getty (spit!) .

Oh sh..

I was meant to get some stock photography for a hair salon and left it too late! ahhh.. that's going to cut into my margins.

You're right. That's a huge increase and don't forget 10 credits = £13 excl VAT so really it's about 16.50 for 5 extra small images for a web development project.

I guess I will have to look to competitors such as fotalia /photoradar.com.

Another thing I will have to do is pass the increase onto the clients. So a brochure will probably cost the client about £30 more for example.

I guess us designers will have to raise our rates as well?

I have just been on the phone to fotolia and spoke to their UK manager - nice chap - he informed me that they are nothing to do with Getty images and although they are slightly more expensive than the old istock proces (57p = 1credit) - (75p small image Fotolia) - i will now be putting all my business thought them - they have had a massive increase in their image bank in the last 2 years and he says they have over 8M images online now. I started using istock for convenience and the reasonable prices - but since they have been taken over by Getty they have gone way way down in my estimation. I have also advised all my customers to switch to Fotolia and close the istock account.

Oh and i can confirm that sxc.hu is indeed owned by Getty - check the page footer...... So that site will be going in the sin bin as well.
I dont care if some of the images are free for me its a matter of principle - i would rather take the photos myself than support a greedy company.

So why do you dislike Getty so much? Aside from their barbaric paparazzi practice.

Just checked out Fotalia and it seems pretty good and;

£16.50 istock = 5 extra small images on all images
£20.00 fotalia = 20 extra small images on 75p credit images.

definitely a clear winner here.

fotolia is what I use also because of pricing

So why do you dislike Getty so much? Aside from their barbaric paparazzi practice.

One of the main reasons i dispise them is for their underhanded practice of sweeping the web with picscout and then making unreasonable demands to businesses claiming unauthorised use of images - one person i know was billed £1700 for ONE image about 100x100px which his old web designer had put on his site.

This particular image was used with the ok of the company they were promioting (who bought it presumably from getty) and had been on the site for over 2 years and was picked up by picscout - and he was billed a stupid amount for 'unauthorised use' . he was not aware he was comitting any 'offence'.

He was not to blame - the insurance company who provided the image was partly at fault (the old web designer was a student and he had no idea either).

They have been doing this underhanded practice for a while now and i think its completley unfair. I removed the image straight away for him - but he was continually harassed by Getty and their solicitors.

I also heard of one small business who got billed 17K for 9 or so images on their site, and went out of business as a result (altough i am basing this on what i read on another forum somewhere - so how much truth there is - and if there was a law suit i dont know) . Fair enough - notify them and give them a chance to rectify - but making such riduculous demands for huge sums of money is well out of order. That, my friend is why i hate them so much.

I dont care if people try to justify this by saying, - well you should have known to the company using the images, dont use images that you haven't paid for etc... well i know that and i have always paid for my images (except the free ones) - but trying to sting a small business or induvidual for £1700 per image its unreasonable and tantamount to bullying.

I dont agree with people abusing copyright - and using images from google willy nilly - but that also extends to corporate bully tactics as well.

They sound as bad as the RIAA.

Yeah - well this coupled with the FECKING sneaky price increase was the straw that broke the camels back.

I have just stopped one customer putting more credits on this morning and sent out an email to the rest.

Generally i get the customers to register - then they credit the account and then i 'buy' the images for them. That way there is no dispute on 'copyright enfringement' and who owns the right to publish the image on their site if 'Mr Picscout' spiders their site with its dirty little spidery legs

Interesting way of working.

I prefer to take control - as there are usually leftovers; especially when it comes to stock photos for websites since extra small usually suffices.

and yeah, you're right - that was a very sleazy tactic. I bet Fotalia and co are reporting increase in their registrations and purchases today

Ok, look, there are some other resources besides iStock that are very good, Fotolia being one of them. I highly recommend you check out Dreamstime.com and StockXpert.com. Dreamstime's prices are tiered, but there are a TON of images still just 1 credit = $1 and their sizes are usually bigger than the tiny "web" images that iStock has gone too. You might also give 123RF a shot, decent selection, still fair pricing. There's also BigStockPhoto, again, still fair pricing 1 credit = $1.

As for Stock Xchange - iStock bought them and a lot of long-time contributors pulled out, which is sad, but I understand why they did - Getty's influence is definitely negative. However, iStock SWEARS up and down that SXC.HU will remain free. I'm skeptical.. but we'll see, I still use them a lot.

and yeah, you're right - that was a very sleazy tactic.

I just hope others dont follow suit.
Ill have a look at some of the things you mention also Ladyn - ideally though I like to get all images from one source so i can trace them in the eventuallity of any copyright questions. As i said before and i will say again - iStock are well and truly binned for me !!!

Getty Images be gone!

Does seem a bit of a steep increase

in fairnes, as an aspiring photographer myself, I feel £3 is not a lot for the use of a large image, however I do see where you are coming from, that they have gained reliable customers who have gotten used to and acepted their prices then all of a sudden the customers (who perhaps base their price lists for webdesign creation or any other field they are in that they are required to buy stock images.) go to bu stock and realise they haven't asked their customers for enought money to cover their costs of buying stock images.

Originally Posted by LadynRed

Ok, look, there are some other resources besides iStock that are very good, Fotolia being one of them. I highly recommend you check out Dreamstime.com and StockXpert.com. Dreamstime's prices are tiered, but there are a TON of images still just 1 credit = $1 and their sizes are usually bigger than the tiny "web" images that iStock has gone too. You might also give 123RF a shot, decent selection, still fair pricing. There's also BigStockPhoto, again, still fair pricing 1 credit = $1.

As for Stock Xchange - iStock bought them and a lot of long-time contributors pulled out, which is sad, but I understand why they did - Getty's influence is definitely negative. However, iStock SWEARS up and down that SXC.HU will remain free. I'm skeptical.. but we'll see, I still use them a lot.

ditto that! I used istock years ago when I first started my weddings website, and thought there wasn't any other game in town. Then someone turned me onto dreamstime.com. Their prices for the types of images I needed were cheaper, and there was more of a selection. I LOVE dreamstime and only pop over to istock if there is a really specific image I am looking for that I can't find on dreamstime. And even then I hate to use them....

This sucks. I use it frequently.

I just wish they would give you larger comp photos to use for mock-ups.

Originally Posted by shonkyboy

I just hope others dont follow suit.
Ill have a look at some of the things you mention also Ladyn - ideally though I like to get all images from one source so i can trace them in the eventuallity of any copyright questions. As i said before and i will say again - iStock are well and truly binned for me !!!

Getty Images be gone!

Try www.vivozoom.com. 5 images, $10 or Web subscription (30 days, 15 images a day), for $99.

Run by ex-Getty staff.