As we started ImageTrail, almost every person we have told about it has one reaction: Why should I buy a photo when I can find one on Google?
The answer is pretty simple:
1) Better Images
The number one reason to buy photos has to be the increase in quality you will find. Here is an example of a free photo I found. This was downloaded from the Free Section of Dreamstime, so yes it is legality (see Legality below).
This is still a great image and actually better than you will normally find in 10-20 minutes of searching in most places. We are big fans of the free section of Dreamstime for some common image types. However, a couple minutes in the "not-free" section resulting in these excellent finds, both of which we licensed for only $1.
Now if you are looking for the particular type of duck shown in the first image, this maybe an unfair comparison, but we quickly (see Less Time below) found an image with lots of color and impact and it only set us back $1. For a small business and many consumers it is worth a little money to earn a few WOWs.
2) Legality
While there are great resources for legal free images such as sxc.hu, most "free" images are actually "borrowed" or even stolen. If you found and imageon Google and didn't contact the website owner and find out who owns the copyright to that photo or illustration, you are probably breaking copyright laws that could land you in trouble. One of the beautiful technologies of the internet are services like _____ that help photographer track the use of their photos and find people who may have bored them and make them either remove the photo or pay up.
Stock Photography and even more particular Microstock Photography is a cheap (ie affordable) way to keep yourself legal. For $1-$5 USD you can get great pictures for your website or blog and sleep peacefully that you haven't broken any laws.
3) Resolution & Quality
I often find when comparing stock images, that I find images that I can imagine more than one use for. I used this image a few years ago for a youth camp, but when I went to but the image realized that it would make a great header for a postcard or many other uses. I spent $5 instead of the $1 I originally planned and got a full 8mp image.
Quality is not always the same as resolution. If you download an image from the web and it is saved in JPG or GIF format, it is often not saved at full quality. This is sometimes expressed on a scale from 1 to 10 and web images are often saved at 6-8 in order to speed up download times. If you edit and change that image and save again, the quality is further reduced each time.
4) Less Time
If you work in a field that requires the use of image, than time should be top on your list. People tell me they often spend 1-2 hours finding the perfect image. I usualy spend 10-15 minutes. That is because each of the microstock agencies has a quality review process that helps keep a high quality collection. This combined with complicated search algorithms that try and find out what you are really looking for from the keywords you type in helps to speed the searching process.
Shown below is a video that higlights how easy it can be to find professional images right from within Microsoft Office, using Fotolia's Office add-in toolbar. Other agencies have also come out with these tools to make the whole process easy and integrated.