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Fotolia Review |
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 The company Fotolia is a huge community of artistic professionals, photographers and other people that enjoy sharing, learning, and expressing themselves through the art of photography and image creativity- offering their vast range of quality pictures to the world through marketing them online. Fotolia is a well known commodity for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and distribute stock imagery and illustrations. |
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Ease of Use & Search Facility :  |
In relation to their stock site (Fotolia.com), they offer several search options including, by theme, keyword, production status and by collection. The extensive list of categories is easily found, conveniently located on the home page in clear view. With the number of images increasing daily, although an important factor it is not about more images but about searching Specialist Collections that sets them apart. When you utilize search options, you are bound to find unique content. This is the strength that comes through having a very large data base of images. You are drawing out a range of specialist images that are now easy to find, unlike the old ways of many years ago. We as consumers are able to demand the best and most appropriate pictures, images and photographs directly to our desktops with efficiency and great speed. |
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Collection Quality :  |
Fotolia challenges the traditional closed agency model by offering to everyone- hobbyist or professional a real opportunity to showcase, monetize and distribute their talents regardless of their fame, status, or size of portfolio. This fact makes them a winner in my eyes! |
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Size of Collection : |
Fotolia boasts 427,603 members of designers, art directors, photographers, as well as 2,392,119 stock images online, claiming to be one of the best online suppliers offering simply the best deal for stock photos, EVER! Photographers and designers do constantly update the site with thousands of new photos and illustrations each day. They claim to be one of the largest image banks of free and affordable royalty free photos and illustrations perfect for any medium, be it web or print. |
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Pricing :  |
Fotolia is able to offer individuals and professionals, including advertising agencies, press, small business, graphic artists as well as designers the greatest image collection in the world for as little as $1. This is the price for small images only, medium ones cost $2 and large photos are $3 each. When you navigate to the pricing page, unfortunately one of those annoying pop-up scrolling “attention grabber” forms gets in the way of much of the information- making it truly difficult to read. I didn’t like that about the site and I also thought their pricing did not offer as good savings as other options do. I also couldn’t find much that was actually for free. |
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Summary : |
| Overall, although the site is a little cluttered and on the plain side, it offers plenty of photos on file and is easy to navigate around. The pricing could be on the high side as there are no real incentives of discounts for bulk on offer. But still, worth a look at. |
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