Finding free, good quality photos for use in print or in webpages and blogs is notoriously difficult. We test a site that says it does just that to see how good it really is.
One of the biggest problems for people who produce content for print or the web is to find a source of photographs that is both free or inexpensive and which is easy and relatively quick to search.
This website allows for the uploading, exchange and distribution (hence the site’s name) of all manner of photographs. It’s been running since 2001 and so has an extensive database of suitable material in a good variety of categories.
Firstly, the all important legal information. Go to ‘Help’ at the bottom of the page and, when the help page opens, choose item number 7 that will open to display the legal information. Choose the page that you want depending on whether you are thinking of choosing or uploading photographs. Back on the Help page, there is also a link to a very useful FAQ. Basically, subject to the legal and individual conditions, photos are available to use for free.
Photographs uploaded are individually checked to ensure that they conform to the site’s conditions of use so all the photos that you find are good quality and free from trademark problems and the like.
If you want simply to browse, click ‘Browse’ in the left hand menu and, when the page opens, choose from the categories on the right, clicking the ‘+’ button to expand. The categories are usually chosen to assist in finding an image.
For a more ‘in depth’ search choose the ‘Advanced search’ from the horizontal tabs and this will provide you with many more options. The tag system that the photos use seems to enable the right photos to appear despite some strict search criteria.
Statistics on the far right of the tabs is an interesting page that shows the numbers of downloads per country and city along with other useful information. This is an area where it is worth spending a minute or so.
The ‘Tutorials’ tab holds a list of short tutorials and howtos on a variety of photo related subjects and is well worth a look, even if you are an experienced photo-manipulator.
Blogs takes you to the sort of page you expect and, again, it is worth setting aside a few minutes to read the blogs and well worth checking them at each visit for new and interesting content.
The search button at the top left allows you to search quickly for a photograph and is useful for an initial scan or quick search. This search button also allows you to search for photos or photographers by user, file, camera, country and city.
In use, the site is simple and intuitive to use, pages open easily and quickly and, at the time we were there, everything worked. The colours and layout are not intrusive and this allows for quick and easy searching and downloading. Membership is free.
We have used the website ourselves from time to time over the last two years or so and have always found it quick and easy to find what we wanted. The submitted photos are of good quality and usually very suitable for both print based and web based work.
Overall this is an excellent resource for anyone wanting the occasional photo for a website or blog or for the writer needing images for articles. It would even be suitable for the semi-professional needing high resolution photographs on a regular basis.
We give this site a prominent bookmark and we recommend it.
Sat, Apr 25, 2009, by Mike Taperell
File Sharing