Buying Graphic Art for Printing - fotolia.com Review

Whenever my customers need graphic elements for their printing projects, I usually point them to iStockphoto.com.  iStock is well known in the industry as a reliable source for images with fabulous quality and a huge selection.  So this week, while wandering around cyberspace from one inspirational website to another, I ran across a review of fotolia.com,  a similar website for stock images. After taking a closer look at fotolia and comparing the two sites, here are my impressions:

1. Pricing can be significantly lower when comparing similar images of similar size.  If you're like me and only need images on occasion, you'll be using their standard license pricing rather than a subscription. Both sites require you to buy credits to purchase and those credits expire in one year.

2. Quality is good but I have to say,  I'm still partial to iStockphoto.  It might just be that I'm biased, but there seems to be more to choose from with the quality that I've come to expect.  Fotolia does have a large collection to choose from and the images are not bad, it's just that iStock's are so good. 

3. Search results could be improved.  Depending on your search terms, you can get hundreds of non-relevant images returned.  As we all know, this can waste gobs of your time when searching for that perfect image.  

4.  More file formats to choose from. One big advantage of fotolia is that illustrations are all available as .jpg files that can be edited in Photoshop or any photo editing software. If you want to purchase an illustration on iStock, you must download a premium priced vector file.  Vector images can only be edited with vector editing software such as Illustrator.  

Available image sizes / resolution at fotolia.com:

5. Website not as appealing. As a person of a certain age, I have to question why websites continue to use hard-to-see, tiny fonts and icons in shades of gray on white.  How many baby boomers are out there squinting at their laptops?  While the website is easy to use and navigate, it is not easy to see... at least not for me.  

I'll still be pointing my customers to iStockphoto, but for lower prices, a great selection and more options for file formats, my advice would be to try fotolia first.