Online Stock

Photography Agencies

AbleStock.com:  Subscription based royalty free stock photography that specializes in large, high resolution photos of 25MB to 50MB in size.  Useful for print publications.

Big Stock Photo: Over 400,000 royalty free stock photos available for purchase online.  Micro-purchase system.  Buyer purchases credits, which are used to buy photos. 

Corbis Stock Photos:  A major player in the industry.  This organization was founded by Bill Gates and holds one of the largest collections of imagery in the world.  The collection offers imagery from the finest commercial photographers, photojournalists, museums, and cultural institutions in the world, including the Andy Warhol Foundation, Ansel Adams, Douglas Kirkland, Mark Seliger, James White, Marvel Enterprises, The National Gallery-London, Christie's Images, and the Bettmann, Hulton-Deutsch, and Brett Weston collections.

They offer both rights managed and royalty free photos.   Corbis requires that you register with their site in order to view pricing information on individual images. 

fotolia:  fotolia.com has stock photos for sale at prices of $1 to $3 each.  This community based site offers a place for photographers to sell photos and for small businesses, web designers, and others to buy low cost stock photos.

Getty Images:  Getty Images is the other major player in the stock photography industry.  Getty was the first company to license imagery via the web, a step which the rest of the industry soon followed.  According to company literature, gettyimages.com serves an average of 3.2 million thumbnails, 6.5 million visits, and 3.5 million unique visitors each month.  Nearly 100% of the company's visual content is delivered digitally. 

Getty offers both rights managed and royalty free photos.  Registration is required to view photo prices. 

iStockphoto.com: iStockphoto is an online, royalty free, stock  photography provider that operates on the micropayment business model.  iStockphoto revolutionized the stock photography market with online sales of inexpensive, high quality stock photography.  iStockphoto provides professional quality stock photos for as little as $1 each. 

Photo buyers purchase download credits at a dollar or less a piece (you get a discount for purchasing credits in groups of 25 or more).  These credits are used to purchase photos, which cost 1 to 5 credits, depending on size.  Royalty free vector graphics are also available.  They are priced from 1 to 40 credits.  

Jupiter Images:  Jupiter images offers an extensive collection of royalty free and rights managed professional stock photos.  They provide access to image collections from leading agencies around the world.  Images are available as single photos and as collections of royalty photos on CD.

The Jupiter Images website is very cleanly designed and easy to navigate.  No registration process is required to search the photo libraries or view photo prices.

Photos.com:  Photos.com offers stock photos by both subscription and by individual image purchase.  According to their website, photos.com has over 180,000 photos and photo objects.  Subscribers can download up to 250 photos a day. 

Shutterstock.com:  Shutterstock is a subscription based royalty free online stock photography service.  According to their website, they have over 850,000 images in their library.  Buyers choose a monthly payment plan, and can download up to 750 images a month. 

Stockphotographyonline.com:  This allows you to buy stock photos on a subscription or individual file basis.  They also offer stock photo CDs.  No sign up required to search photos or see pricing.