I had the pleasure to use Fotolia subscriptions. Without a doubt, I recommend.
8 Reasons For Fotolia Microstock
1. Time Savings
Fotolia services will save you time, as you are much more likely to find what you need quickly. A savings in time translates into saving money.
2. Clear Licensing Agreement
One hazard of being a designer is learning about copyright laws, restrictions and licenses. On the free photo sites, you have to read the fine print for each and every photo you use. Some photographs come with no restrictions, some are only for non-commercial use and some require the name of the photographer. You don’t have to deal with this headache on Fotolia. The licensing agreement will be the same for all photos in the license category you select, which is typically a standard royalty-free license.
3. Availability of Vector Art and Illustrations
Fotolia offers a wide variety of vector art and illustrations. Illustrated graphics can give a course a completely unique look and feel. Vector art refers to graphics that are hand drawn in a tool like Adobe Illustrator. Because they exist as mathematical renderings, they can be expanded to any size and manipulated in a vector graphics program.
4. Compelling Images
You can find photos based on a concept, emotion or theme. You can find people doing interesting things and simple single objects that are ready to use.
5. Guaranteed Model Releases
You need the signed release of a model to use his or her photo. Model releases are guaranteed with a paid service. This is not true on a free site. That’s why I never use photographs of a person from a free service.
6. More Efficient Search
There’s nothing like typing in the search term ‘money’ and getting back photos of the Eiffel tower. This kind of poor search functionality is common on some free photo sites. On the other hand, efficient search functionality is one of the foundations of Fotolia. Fotolia has staff to tag their photos with keywords, so the results are usually more accurate. The keywords are also translated in many languages.
7. Supports The Arts
The world would only be shades of gray without the Arts. By paying for images, you’re helping photographers and illustrators earn a living. We need them.
8. Reduces Stress
When you can quickly find the graphics you like and need, it reduces your level of stress. And we all need that.
Similar to the music or film industry, we believe that every artist's (photographers and designers) image is a work of the soul and protected by intellectual property rights.
Fotolia is convinced that the principle reason for illegal pirated use of protected images is mainly due to the high price barrier created by other agencies.
Fotolia provides a compromise between photographers and buyers, by protecting a photographer's intellectual property rights and offering high commissions, while legally lowering the price barrier so that everyone may enjoy/afford these beautiful images.
In addition, Fotolia challenges the traditional closed agency model by offering the opportunity to monetize their talents to everyone, hobbyist or professional, whatever their fame, status, or size of portfolio may be.
Thanks to a collaborative online model, Fotolia is able to offer individuals and professionals (advertising agencies, press, small business, graphic artists, designers) the greatest image collection in the world for free or as little as $0.75.
