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Dreamstime Over 300,000 FREE professional images in the collection of nearly 12 million. Collection includes photographs, illustrations and paintings. Photographs at Dreamstime are mostly of great quality and prices start at less than $1.00 per license. Pays a high commission rate to photographers.
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iStockphoto iStockphoto is probably the most popular microstock agency in the world. They offer some free images. But mostly the iStockphoto collection offers millions of high quality photos, illustrations, videos, audio and flash. The photos start at $1.00 per license. While iStockphoto offers great selection and quality for the designer, they are very difficult to deal with as a photography, starting with an exceptionally low commission rate of 20%.
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123rf I like 123rf, if only because they seem to be the underdog who is trying harder. 123rf offers just shy of 10 million photographs and vector illustrations. Around 250,000 of those are FREE. The rest have license prices starting at $0.68. The quality of their images is excellent. For the photographer they are relatively easy to work with and pay a good commission rate.
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Shutterstock Shutterstock offers over 15 million photographs, vectors and illustrations. They are the largest subscription based agency in the world, adding thousands of new images every day. As a subscription based agency, Shutterstock's prices are extremely competative if you are buying quantities of images (and the higher the quantity, the lower the cost). Shutterstock does offer FREE images as well. By reputation, Shutterstock provides the majority of income for many, many photographers. They are not to be overlooked.
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Fotolia Fotolia is a very popular site in Europe. It stands to reason, therefore, that if you want an image with a European edge, Fotolia is a great place to look. The collection at Fotolia currently contains 13.4 million images and vectors. Free images are available, but to get to them, you first have to "Like" Fotolia on Facebook, then sort through the free images in Facebook. It seems easier to me to just use one of the other sites. The image quality of this collection is quite good, but lacks somewhat in creativity.
