Recent Stock Photo Industry Press Releases

Fotolia Launches PhotoXpress

Microstock photography pioneer Fotolia launches free, premier-quality RF image bank

Hartford, CT, May 21, 209. Today, PhotoXpress announced the launch of the world's largest free, premier-quality image bank, offering creative professionals Royalty Free image licenses for personal or professional use -- from Web site design and brochure illustrations to advertisements and editorial imagery.

"Small businesses, home businesses, consultants and students need images to help improve the look of their marketing campaigns and presentations. They struggle to find high-quality, affordable images for their company brochures, Web sites, advertising and newsletters. Today, the struggle is over," explains Patrick Lor, President, PhotoXpress North America.

Shutterstock Footage Surpasses 100K Clips

Shutterstock Footage Continues Library Expansion, Surpasses 100,000 Royalty-Free Video Clips - The rapid growth has company poised to capitalize on the global surge in video use

New York, March 25, 2009. Shutterstock, the world's largest subscription-based online stock image agency, just announced that Shutterstock Footage has added its 100,000th clip to its rapidly expanding online library of high quality royalty-free stock footage. Shutterstock was the first company to offer affordable, royalty-free stock video clips by subscription when it launched Shutterstock Footage in 2006.

[Full video here]

Image Source seeks royalty free collections for immediate acquisition

London, UK, Feb. 17, 2009. Image Source, the world's leading independent producer of premium royalty free stock photography, is currently actively seeking to purchase large scale royalty free collections from other agencies or directly from photographers.

Image Source’s own collection, currently amounting to around 150,000 images, is primarily focussed around the high-end lifestyle, business and beauty categories, ‘We are on the look out for new collections which complement our main image categories and our premium quality, both in terms of image creativity, high production values and legal hygiene”, says Duncan Grossart, Joint CEO of Image Source, “while we already have our own aggressive production schedule in place for 2009, we are always looking for larger scale acquisitions which can add immediate accretive sales”.

Inspirestock Goes Live on Veer

Kowloon, Hong Kong. Nov. 30, 2008. Inspirestock announced today the signing of its distribution agreement with one of the stock photo industry's most respected image providers - Veer.

“This is a great opportunity and we are honored to be associated with Veer. Veer's sales strategy and strong focus on the creative community are two important factors that allow us to remain strong and resilient to weather out the glum economy ahead. With this association, we hope to reach out to the creative community in offering our distinctive class of creatively inspiring imagery,” says Stephanie Sitt, VP of Sales and Marketing for Inspirestock.

agodia Images: New online stock agency for royalty free images

Coventry, UK, Nov. 27, 2008. Creative minds often do ask themselves: "Why do high resolution images often cost more than £50 for commercial use?" - At agodia.com communication professionals will find images in print quality with a maximum price of £14,99 including all usage rights. Steadily increasing registration numbers and sales confirm the strategy of the new online stock photo agency "agodia Images".

"Many of the well known stock agencies are working with complicated pricing models, long lists of different prices depending on resolution, media, number of copies and other criterias" explains Kai Stueckmann, founder of agodia Images. "agodia Images wants to keep the pricing simple and transparent for the visitors."

Northfoto represents Corbis Royalty-Free

Budapest, Hungary, Nov. 14, 2008. Northfoto, Central and Southeastern Europe's leading distributor of visual content, announces that it has signed an agreement with Corbis to represent five of its royalty-free collections. The agreement allows Northfoto to market and license Corbis RF, Zefa, InsideOut Pix, Image100, and ImageShop, in its core markets of Hungary and Romania, as well as Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, and Russia.

"Having the capability to offer this fantastic collection of royalty-free photography to our growing base of creative clients is a great opportunity for this company," said Mark Milstein, the founder and managing director of Northfoto.

Kursiv launches BloopPix

Wittenbach, Switzerland, Oct. 22, 2008. Swiss photoagency Kursiv launches BloopPix, a collection of royalty-free images at a competitive price. Bloop is the name of a sound of unknown origin, captured somewhere west of south america in deep sea.

BloopPix comes from the deepest sources of the internet, but offers quality of known origin, with all that is needed for hasle-free licensing.

Getty Images and Flickr Announce Exclusive Partnership to Offer New Collection of Creative Imagery

New Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com to Provide Customers Even More Authentic, Diverse and Regionally Relevant Imagery

Seattle, WA & San Francisco, CA, July 08, 2008. Getty Images, the world´s leading creator and distributor of visual content and other digital media, and Flickr™, a division of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) and one of the world's largest photo sharing communities, today announce a collaboration that unites the authenticity of images from the Flickr community with Getty Images' imagery collections, photographic expertise and unrivalled experience in licensing digital media.

The exclusive partnership allows Getty Images to invite Flickr members to participate in a Flickr branded collection on www.gettyimages.com that will be available for licensing to Getty Images´ creative, commercial and editorial customers in the coming months.

Against all odds – Westend61 increases prices and tightens its collections

Fuerstenfeldbruck, Bavaria, Apr. 16, 2008. As of May 1st 2008, Westend61 will increase the prices of its royalty free imagery in printing format by an average of 25%. Stephan Bock, Westend61’s CEO, explains: „Our royalty free collection is an international player in the Champions League. Our products Made in Germany are appreciated by more than 180 partner agencies all over the world. However, keeping and continuously improving this high level requires increased investments in research, productions and in a highly skilled and motivated team at Westend61. Therefore, we will go against the current trend in the business and increase our prices. Quality has to have its price.“

Westend61 will at the same time remove those images from its collection that do not meet the quality requirements or have not been sought by customers for a longer period of time. This applies to both licensing models offered by the agency. 3,000 royalty free images have been removed from its collection in December 2007.

RF and RM Submissions, Now at Inmagine!

Houston, TX, Apr. 08, 2008. Royalty-Free stock photo library Inmagine Corp LLC is now accepting submissions from image suppliers and professional photographers into its IRIS (Inmagine RM & RF Image Submission) collection. Set to be launched in the second quarter of 2008, IRIS will represent the best Royalty-Free and Rights-Managed works from their respective portfolios.

“We've been in the stock photo industry for nearly a decade and we know how professional photographers feel about their work. We believe with Inmagine Submissions, we can directly offer suppliers and photographers 3 essential values – Control, Transparency and Service Assurance!” says Stephanie Sitt, VP of Sales and Marketing for Inmagine Corp LLC.