Thinkcage

As a designer, stock photography is a big part of my workflow. Very few of our clients either have or can afford custom photography so we rely heavily on online stock photography resources such as GettyImages and iStockPhoto.com. Getty has everything, but iStock is built around a community and is much more reasonably priced offering images for as little as around a dollar.

Recently, however, I was turned-on to a new resource: Lucky Oliver. Lucky Oliver seems to be built on the model of iStock and that’s a good thing. Plus they’ve added a few twists, a nice snappy site design, and a cute metaphor that makes browsing and buying images a pretty nice experience. The carnival theme is cute and a nice change from iStock’s rapidly aging look. And tokens are only $1 (slightly less than iStock) so you can get images for $1-$20 depending on the size and resolution. Most can be had for under $5.

One feature I really like is the list of related keywords that appears to the right of your image search results. Each one has a “+” or “-” icon next to it that allows you to add and remove additional keywords to and from your query. Getty and some of the others allow you to narrow by choosing a new search from matching words but that isn’t as useful or interactive — and you can’t even see them until you reach an image detail page. With Lucky Oliver the list is right on the results page. Nice.

One advantage iStockPhoto has over Lucky Oliver (and all of the other online services I’ve used) is the Ajax thumbnail previews that dynamically display a larger version of the selected photo when you hover your mouse over each result in the list. This is great for getting a little bit better view of the photo before clicking over to the detail page for a full preview. The lack of this feature isn’t really a problem but I very much would like to see them add it at some point.

All said, I’m glad that Lucky Oliver is out there to provide a comparable alternative to iStockPhoto. If you buy stock photos or even sell stock photos, I’d suggest you give them a try. I know they are now a part of my regular photo searches. Choice is a good thing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Online stock photo resource.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.