Is Fotolia Good?

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Last week I get an email to offer me one month free subscription at Fotolia.com. In fact it is not “an email” because after several emails follow up by Jenna, the Fotolia person in charge, I seriously look into the content and offer. I got tons of spam offer emails everyday and most of the time I just glance through and delete those emails. But I really appreciate Jenna’s effort and persistent in the following up. I finally reply her email and one month free subscription is a good deal for me! I can now download Royalty FREE Stock Photos for free!

Fotolia is not new to me because I have an account with it before and bought photos for my project usage. See, for some project we cannot just google images and use the pictures directly. If you pay enough attention, you will see the sentence “This image may be subject to copyright”.

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.

Very important is…

All images offered on Fotolia are Royalty free, they can be used for all kinds of professional documents with no limit on time or copies:

• Creation of advertising media
• Creation of professional documents
• Illustration of press articles
• Illustration of websites, blogs, newsletters, web banners…
• Illustration multimedia documents
• Illustration / Decorations on TV shows or movies
• Creation of derivative products (Extended license)

Enjoy the video and click here to try ==> Fotolia.com