Stock Photos for Digital Scrapbooking

Many digital scrapbooking designers purchase stock photos that are copyright friendly in order to create their designs.

A controversial topic is that CT (creative team) layouts often utilize stock photos also.

Stock photos are also great for blog post images for those who blog often.

Recently, StockXpert closed and merged with isSockphoto (http://www.istockphoto.com/) To purchase photos at iStockphoto, most will choose the pay-as-you-go method by purchasing the minimum of 12 credits for $18.24 ($1.52 per credit). Photos range from 1 to 25 credits depending on their size. Vector illustrations, videos, and audio are also available for purchase. You are sure to find high quality images at this site.

There is some really awesome things available and I believe that some purchasers of kits may be surprised at how many things are not created from scratch in the digital scrapbooking kits that are purchased. In addition, if you are stuck for ideas, just search through the site without purchasing and you are sure to be inspired.
MorgueFile (http://morguefile.com/) is another great place to find stock photos.

This site is totally free.



For instance, here is a freebie I made for you that was created with two images that are totally royalty free for commercial use.

Download here for limited time, then in Subscriber Area.


In addition, a site that was not available to us when I first started digital scrapbooking, but is now a huge resource, is Flickr. When searching for images to utilize, click on advanced search and look for the boxes to enable searching by creative commons.

Once you find an image, be sure to scroll down in the sidebar of that image and click to read that owner's specific creative commons license. Many of them will allow you to modify the image commercially, but will also require you to attribute that image in your TOU's. Here is a one page that you may view the license available at Flickr.

I am going to guess that this opens up whole new worlds for some of you!

Even if you do not sell your designs, but are just looking for something for your own layouts, these are awesome resources!