Polylooks’ new subscription model offers more choice for stock image shoppers

Great news for publishers, agencies and individuals with large stock image needs! Today we’ve launched a new monthly subscription model offering more flexibility for stock photo buyers.

Polylooks’ customers can now take advantage of subscriptions of 100, 300, 500 and 1,000 Credits per month with a choice of three, six or twelve-month packages. Image buyers can purchase licenses flexibly during the month and are no longer obliged to order a specific number of images per day. We believe this model gives more flexibility to publishers, agencies and individuals who regularly download large numbers of stock images.

We also estimate that depending on the volume and length of subscription term, stock image buyers could save up to 60 per cent under the new subscription model.

Via this new subscription model, we’re addressing the needs and wishes of stock image buyers, especially within agencies and publishing. Our experience shows that these customers value a high degree of flexibility.

To take advantage of the offer, visit Polylooks.co.uk. Happy shopping!

Brits bitten by travel bug?

One of the many travel-related images on Polylooks

Images of travel dominated the public’s online search for photos and illustrations during 2009 on the Polylooks.co.uk site, our research has found. Visitors to Polylooks were most likely to use “holiday”, “Europe”, “travel” and “vacation” as search words when looking to buy photos and illustrations on the site. Together, the number of word searches for “holiday” and “vacation” – more or less the same thing – amounted to more than four times the number of searches for “mountain”, the sixth most searched-for image on Polylooks.

Polylooks’ users in the main come from the creative industries – marketers, advertisers and publishers – hinting that “feel good” images were in demand during 2009, an otherwise bleak year for the UK economy, according to Polylooks’ Product Manager, Norbert Weber.

“The request for travel-related images is always high and customers want ‘fresh’ images. This could also be an indicator that confidence was returning to the travel industry during the year,” Weber said.

Other travel-related words featuring among the hundred most popular word searches entered by users on Polylooks during 2009 included “coast” (11^th), “waves” (16^th), “harbour” (26^th) and “palm trees” (83^rd). According to Google’s Insight tool, the four most popular destinations for online image searches in the UK over Google during 2009 were London, New York, Dubai and Blackpool.

Polylooks has close to half a million photos and illustrations in its library so the platform offers plenty of choice for image buyers to select from and you can also use our special filters to pick the right mood and colour scheme for your images.



Get Ready for the FIFA World Cup

Just one of many World Cup-themed images on Polylooks

This year sees one of the biggest events in the global sporting calendar – the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The last World Cup, Germany 2006, saw an estimated cumulative television audience of 30 billion people world-wide and was attended by more than 18,000 media representatives. So this year publishers, bloggers and advertisers will be looking for football-related stock photo images to accompany their stories. Photographers – get your cameras out because image buyers will want soccer shots. Buyers – make sure you know about image rights!

Don’t Stray Offside

Images of real sportspeople can come with expensive copyright costs and restrictions, so generic football stock images and illustrations will be in demand, especially with the rise in bloggers and Web publishers since 2006. Around 900,000 blogs are posted in any given 24-hour period.

Though the event is a way off, creative agencies and sports-related professionals around the world will need photos for marketing materials imminently, so photographers are advised to start thinking about stock photography earlier rather than later.

But it is essential that bloggers, advertisers and publishers only use images which they have the right to use, according to online photo agency Polylooks. The company recently surveyed the UK’s creative industries – heavy users of images – and found that the vast majority were ignorant of stock photography image rights. Many are using images without consent and many don’t even feel guilty!

And when it comes to sports image rights and their value compared to standard stock images, users can end up in hot legal water.

Norbert Weber, Product Manager at Polylooks, advises: “There is still a great deal of confusion when it comes to using photos or illustrations that photographers and artists have made available for sale online. Many people who should be paying for the right to use images are not doing so due to a lack of understanding on industry rules and terminologies.”

Top Tips for Football Photos

Polylooks contains hundreds of football-related stock images, so users can be assured that they’re permitted to use those images without infringing any copyright and attracting the attention of photo agency lawyers. These stock images include players, fans, stadia, officials and other peripheral elements of the “Beautiful Game”. Polylooks’ intuitive filters also ensure that image users can select football stock photos by colour scheme and emotion, and it promises to be a colourful tournament!

Seeking Perfection: How to Find the Right Stock Photo for You

Creative types are often perfectionists. When searching through royalty free stock images a publisher, designer or other user of microstock photography will have in their own mind a vision of the image they’re searching for to accompany their article, blog or design. This is where it gets tricky! For example, Polylooks.co.uk alone hosts more than a quarter of a million images. Someone searching through stock photo websites could easily spend hours looking for that perfect stock photo.

An image selected by mood and colour scheme from Polylooks.co.uk

Most microstock sites will offer simple drop-down, multiple choice menus which filter down the search experience but still leave hundreds or thousands of results to sift through. We at Polylooks have tried to simplify that process as much as possible to reduce the amount of time microstock image purchasers spend looking for photos and artwork by being a little more intuitive.

For example, Polylooks.co.uk enables stock photo purchasers to search by ‘emotion’. Do you want your image to have a friendly feel? Do you want it to convey fear? When contributors upload their photos or artwork, they categorise them by emotion so you can further narrow down your search according to look and feel.

It’s also possible to narrow the search further using colour schemes, so buyers of royalty free stock photos can best match the stock images they want with the background colours they’re already working with. You can also search by photographer, continent or country, and even take your chances with the ‘Random Search’ option.

Stock photography shoppers can also benefit from the size option. Do you need a web image or are you searching for a large format size that you can use for merchandise, such as billboard advertising? Use the size filters to help refine your microstock search.

Our top tips for searching for the right stock photo image are:

· Think about keywords – how would you describe the stock image you’re searching for? They’re probably the same as the photographer tagged them with

· Use the ‘emotion’ option when searching on Polylooks.co.uk – it helps whittle down your search to get a more accurate look and feel

· Think about the colour scheme you want. Many composition shots have a plain, white studio background anyway and are perfect for Web publishing, for example

If you think we missed anything here or you’ve got some tips – or queries – of your own, do please leave a comment and we’ll make sure we respond.

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