There are lots of photo sites out there… both royalty free and pay for use. When taking on your own graphic design project, whether it be a self publishing book, brochure, or website, unless we take the photots ourselves, we need images to give our project that extra push.

How to use a photo site for best benefit.

1. What is the project, does it need a hi-res image?
2. Will that image be used across all your projects?
3. Be sure to read the licensing agreement you might want to get the extended license.

Once you’ve determined the use go to the site of your choice, and start searching by keywords and phrases. Open a lightbox, this is a place where you can store the images you like but aren’t totally positive you’ll be using. This allows you to gather lots and in one place that you can return to and weed our the ones that no longer match your criteria.

You’ll be gathering images based on keyword, look, feel, colors, vertical or horizontal, if they’ll be used with other images as a collage, what is the energy they project, composition, expression, structure. One keyword and supply of images may open the way to another search using a different word.

Remember, the lightbox is a tool for organizing and it allows you to see all the images together in one place before you purchase. As you find the images you like, then you begin purchasing based on what your use will be. Depending on the price of the images, you might want to purchase project specific, but if the images are only $15 or each, I suggest you purchase the large or xlarge and adjust its size as appropriate for your project. That way you won’t need to keep buying the image again at smaller sizes.

Contact me to discuss your projects.
Karrie Ross
Design – Branding – Websites

Question:

What has your experience been with lightboxes…do you use them?