"Free" Stock Photography and Royalty "Free" Stock Photography Sites without Breaking the Bank

[© MorgueFile.com/Demon Dog by Jason Nelson]

Recenty a picture researcher from a well-known publishing house had to select about 46 images for the illustration of a new fact book. After some days of research and crawling around all he had to spend was $ 164, 57. - For 46 images. He did all this without copyright infringement, with real invoices for images that 95% of the mankind would accept to see more than one time in terms of photographic quality.
He suggested some sites where you can buy affordable stock photography with a quality that won´t hurt your eyes too much. We wanted to write a big follow-up to "istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo" but we lack the time to do so right now. So here a just some links.
Yet we don´t know how all these websites pay their photographers in detail, if the photographers can make a living with it, if its all mainly burned-out five years old stock-pixel-crap, if the overall photographic quality is passably or if this is a desirable way for the future -- the fact is, that besides the RF-subscription model more and more established picture researchers are working this way; not to talk about all those "designer´s dirty litte secret" - companies out there.
Bear in mind that this list is not complete and only a personal selection. If you like to add a website -- please write a comment (this time commercial comments are welcome). And - these sites are not all "free" as they sometimes suggest, but for the "lowlowlower- budget". Some only contain a few hundreds pix,  other thousands.

If you now add all the images available via a simple Google Image Search AND all the thousands of images from private photoblogs/moblogs (sometimes their owners just want to be credited)... . However, don´t forget: ask first.

-istockphoto.com (the more professional sister company is  istockpro.com)
-FreeImages.co.uk (2500 original stock photos)
-MorgueFile.com
-Stock XCHNG (about 90,000 images/120.000 registered users)
-FreeStockphotos.com
-Intuitivmedia
-Freephoto.com
-BigFoto.com
-Orange-Trash
-OpenPhoto.Net
-Photographers' and Illustrators' Artist Corners | Creative Commons
-FreeStock Photography
-Image*After (also Textures)
-Pixel Perfect Digital
-DHD Multimedia Gallery (5000 strange images)
-Flyerstarter (Small Fee, Great Nightclub Promotional Photos)
-Picstyle
-mimg :: free images
-Affordable Stock Photography
-stock.kriegsnet.com
-U.S. Newswire Newsphotos (free if registered; editorial use encouraged)

Real bucks:
-StockedPhotos.com (Subscription)
-Photos.com (Subscription, 100,000 images; the big player in the background is JupiterMedia/JupiterImages who recently bought Comstock)

[© Flyerstarter.com]

[This image is NOT from UglyImages.com]

Comments

[Jessica of Matton Images]

I wonder how many of these "cheap" libraries that build their image collections from "off staff" photographers can provide model or property releases, or can provide images without copyright infringement. I know a lot of clients that would not touch an image without the security of a full release. This is one of the advantages that bigger royalty free libraries can offer especially when aiming image sales at larger corparate companies.

[Neil J Bradford]

As I have only just found this blog... this is a somewhat tardy reply to Jessica at Matton Images.
It would suggest to me that a lot of stock photo libraries out there feel under threat as more and more affordable libraries are openning up. Some may be of lesser quality but some really do provide hgh quality new stock photography from bona fide photographers who simply want to sell their work!
I studied both graphic design and photography over 6 years but became primarily a graphic designer and almost choked every time I bought an image through one of then then few stock libraries. Using only transparency film, I started building a library of flower photos and then launched a website: http://www.flower-photos.co.uk selling each image for only 40GBP/77USD. I became inundated with many truly talented photographers wishing to sell their work although they weren't necessarily flower orientated. Some of the quality I simply couldn't ignore and eventually developed a website dedicated to providing high quality stock photography at the same price as on flower-photos. With 6 photographers from around the world and myself, we provide 40,000 plus stock photos with the number growing weekly.
It's about time there were some high quality royalty free and rights managed stock photo libraries with prices affordable to most designers out there. We also provide full release for both models and property with no chance of copyright infringement for a steadily growing client base including: Boots, Readers Digest to mention but a few.
I'd like to add our library to the list contained within this blog.... www.Photo-Image-Stock.com