This review of Fotolia rounds out my series on stock photography (see the article) with the last of the three stock photography sites that I have extensive experience with. There are plenty of others… I just don’t have the first-hand knowledge necessary to do a fair review of them.
Fotolia works much like the previous two sites I reviewed. You can start with a basic keyword search and then narrow the results by various criteria.
The main advantage of Fotolia for me is its pricing. As with the other sites, you have a choice between buying credits and applying them towards photos or buying a time-limited subscription.
The smallest number of credits you can buy is 10 for $13. Again, I will give my standard disclaimer that these sites change pricing policies often, so my examples are only valid on the day I write them! Credits expire 1 year from the purchase date. I found the pricing per photo tricky to understand at first. Each image is available in a variety of pixel dimensions labeled like shirt sizes – from XS up to XXL. But the number of credits needed for an XS or an L varies from image to image. Some pictures are as cheap as 1 credit for an XS. Others may be as much as 10 credits for an XS. If budget is a concern, make sure to use the search filter for “Max Price”, which lets you specify the most you are willing to pay for an XS (with the understanding that larger sizes will increase proportionally).
Much better for my needs when pictorializing many slides in a presentation is the subscription plan. Fotolia gives you two choices for subscription plans, and I found the naming confusing again. The two plan types are “Daily” and “Monthly” – but they each are offered in time spans of month-long durations. The difference is that a “daily plan” lets you download up to a given number of images per day over the course of a month. If you don’t use all your allowed downloads on a given day, tough luck… your allowance doesn’t get increased for the next day. You need to be a serious volume user with constant daily needs for graphics in order for this plan to make economic sense.
The plan that worked for me was the monthly subscription. This gives me one month to download a given number of pictures. The lowest price is $75 for 50 images. It doesn’t matter if you download all 50 images on the first day of the month or spread out your downloads over the course of the month. $75 is a figure I can easily justify when working on one or two PowerPoint decks.
With the subscription plan, you automatically get the biggest version of the image. That is fantastic for doing editing, cropping, or resizing since you never run the risk of ending up with a grainy or fuzzy expanded image. However it does mean you need to compress your pictures in PowerPoint, as those gigantic pixel sizes can really expand your PowerPoint file size.
The search filters include the layout orientation, primary color, and “isolated” – an easy way to find images on a white background for use on white slides or for turning into transparencies.
Fotolia’s categorization didn’t thrill me. They let you select high level categories such as “Objects” or “Business” and then drill down into subcategories below that. Each selection resets the display and you need to scroll back to where you were in the filter display. It eventually does help to focus in on images matching your criteria, but it’s a bit cumbersome.
I found that the models featured in Fotolia’s image collection are overwhelmingly Caucasian. Many looked Scandinavian or Northern European to my eyes. Yes, you can find other ethnicities, but they make up a small percentage of the offerings. As an example, I just typed in “Computer” in the category of “Business People” and looked at a grid of the first 100 results. There is not a single Black, Asian, Indian, or Hispanic model in the group.
I like Fotolia for the 1-month subscription option, offering me 50 high resolution images on my schedule, with less chance of wasted money. Search facilities are adequate, photo diversity is not quite up to the level of Dreamstime or iStockPhoto. This would be a good first option, with the other sites used sparingly on a credits basis to fill in the gaps you can’t satisfy through Fotolia.
