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5 Ways to Win at Choosing the Right Stock Images for Your Website
| Published: 10th June 2018 17:40 |
Finding stock images is straightforward. In fact, it is easy, given how ubiquitous they are online.
While finding these images may not pose too difficult a task, finding the right ones for your website should take some time and careful consideration. Boring, dull, and painfully generic photos are highly unlikely to inspire, and they will also be widely used, giving your website a lacklustre feel. If you would rather stick to this tired method or create a more exciting and impactful design using Depositphotos or other solutions is your call.
How to Make Stock Photos Work
Making stock images work for you requires planning and an understanding of what you are trying to say. If not using free images you will need to consider pricing – which can vary from modest to expensive - and the overall value of using the images.
Stock imagery can be a real boost to your website, once you know how you are set to use them.
Plan Your Design
The first step is to plan the design of your webpage or site. If the website is a wall in your living room, then the photos will essentially be the décor. They should complement the webpage or site and be pertinent to the content which they accompany.
When you know the design which you are going for, you can then plan for things such as the size, type, and contrast/hue of the images to use.
Source the Right Photos
The right images should be those which enhance your work, not confuse or befuddle your audience. A soft and bright website would look ghastly with a cold and overbearing image. There should be a sense of fluency when marrying images and copy.
Knowing where to position the right photos will help, but if you are unaware of what the right images should be, then you should figure this out before you go any further.
Add your Own Touch
Providing there are no licensing restrictions or bans on editing the photos, you can go ahead and customize the imagery to suit your requirements. Cropping, editing the colour, adding an overlay, or merging images may bring your website to life.
Knowing how to use a software editing suite would be very handy in this instance, so don’t be afraid to play around a little with some of your own personal photos to get used to how things work.
Mixing with Your Own Images
You may find that some stock photos work excellently well with some of your own images. If this is the case – and you have ascertained that there are no restrictions on amending them – go ahead and make some cool customisations.
The key to using stock imagery to compliment your website or webpage is to know when, where, and how to get the best out of the photos you chose. Sometimes designers may feel a little uneasy with simply using the photos “as-is,” but quite often, this does not have to be the case.
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