Design your way

If your job involves using royalty-free images on a regular basis, you’re probably accustomed to the exhausting web search by now. We all know how vital it is to find perfect stock photos at a decent price.

Special holidays hold a golden opportunity, as images that encompass their essence in some form or another rarely fail to resonate with the audience. Now that Valentine’s Day is due, some of the finest microstock agencies launch special offers, and this makes them worthy of your attention.

YAY Images

We would highly recommend YAY Images, which so far amassed almost 4 million awesome images, reachable via one of the four subscription options: Streaming, Digital, Print, or Pro. You may want to be on the lookout as YAY Images plans to release 1 million celebrity images this February.

If you’re looking for materialized high-resolution images, then you ought to enroll in a Print Image Subscription ($99), which enables printing with even 300 DPI. But as far as digital images meant for online use go, you will strike gold with this agency, because most of the ones I’ve seen so far don’t go any lower than $249 in their subscriptions.

The Digital plan is just $49 per month, and provides users with 1500PX images, ideal for when you’re working on a PowerPoint, e-book, app, or any sort of commercial project. However, the rising star of this stock photo merchant is the Streaming subscription, or “Spotify for images”: an ideal means to procure divine images meant to be published online (for blogs, newsletters).

With Streaming, an in-browser editor allows users to modify acquired images and then publish them with little effort – and this feature is going to be available through all the other subscriptions, as well. All subscribers may host acquired web images for free even after their subscriptions have expired, and soon enough they will be able to upload and edit images of another origin.

Finally, use this code to get a 50% Valentine’s Day discount – VALENTINE_DESIGNYOURWAY.

Stockfresh

Stockfresh places more than 3 million stock photos, graphics, and vectors at their users’ disposal, and that may not be the heftiest collection ever seen, but the most appealing aspect is that all of the above are made available in an accessible manner.

In other words, Stockfresh not only wields some very attractive prepaid packages and subscriptions, but it also makes it dead simple for users to locate and take magnificent images. The speedy process makes most sense when you’re working against an impending deadline and need to track down brilliant images in no time.

If you should make up your mind to go and see what kind of images can be found there in this period, know that buying royalty-free images from this source is not at all expensive: 5 Stockfresh credits cost $4.99, whereas the price of a monthly subscription plan starts at $99.

It would be a good idea to check out the new Valentine’s Day-related images – they are quite delightful, and you’ll undoubtedly find something that you like. As a matter of fact a typical ‘Valentine’s Day’ search is bound to turn up well over 50K photos and almost 18K crisp vectors.

Bigstock

Bigstock commands over 16 million illustrations, vectors, and photos that have the power to delight any creative professional in need of superb images. What can you expect to find if you’re looking for Valentine’s Day-inspired stock files here? To begin with, you will come across 121K drop-dead-gorgeous photos, not to mention almost 54K rich vectors, and also 77K handsome illustrations.

Currently, Bigstock sports a 7-day Free Trial where potential clients, who never acquired files from this marketplace so far, can get a taste of what it would feel like to get images from this agency on a constant basis. During this generous free trial, 5 images can be downloaded and re-downloaded every day, for a whole week (and naturally, you are free to cancel anytime).

Once the trial period is over, if you wish to continue taking flawless images from Bigstock, it would be advisable to sign for a monthly subscription where you may start from 5 imager per day at the acceptable rate of $69. As an alternative, if you’re not yet determined to make a long-term commitment, credit packs are a worthwhile option: the smallest bundle sells 10 credits for $35.

Veer

Veer is worth mentioning in the context of Valentine’s Day, as one of this agency’s albums is entitled ‘The Look of Love’, and has 50 images and illustrations to die for. Besides, lovely fonts are available for purchase via credit card and credit packs. Speaking of which, the smallest bundle of 12 credits is only $14, and new users are promised 10 free credits as registration gift.

Aurora Photos

Aurora Photos has a gorgeous collection of both editorial and commercial images. Ringing names like National Geographic, Apple Computer, and TIME are said to have used images from this place. It wouldn’t hurt to navigate there and see how this agency fares when it comes to season-specific images. Personally, I’ve chanced upon more than 1000 cute images that could be used for the upcoming holiday.

Pixmac

More than 81K heartwarming pictures came up when I initiated a basic valentine search on Pixmac. In order to buy from this agency, more than 7 million images are made available for credit-based purchasing, while 2 and a half million elite images are stacked in a special collection, and can be taken only after signing up for a subscription.

Depositphotos

Depositphotos has so far gathered as many as 20 million royalty-free stock files in its vaults, and the agency entertains a delightful weekly habit of gift-wrapping one item from their Vector Collection. However, I need to mention their glorious Discounted Lightboxes – which are collections made up of festive images which are herewith sold at 20% off their standard price.

Right now, the Valentine’s Day Lightbox is over 900 strong. In addition, designer customers will be thrilled to learn about the Depositphotos Adobe Extension, as it will help them save loads of time by accessing this agency’s database directly from the Adobe workspace.

Inmagine

Inmagine is yet another favorite stock photo supplier, and it boasts of gathering 30 million premium stock photos. If you type in ‘Valentine’s Day’ in its search box, you’ll be presented with more than 20.000 adorable season-focused images, which you can further prune with the help of various filters. By all means, check out their sophisticated search tools.

Alamy

This February, Alamy deserves to be part of my list of ten most sought-after stock photo sources. All in all, the agency takes pride in amassing almost 45 million creative files at your disposal, 50K of which concern Valentine’s Day. Moreover, a promo dictates that code ‘alamyvectors’ takes 30% off any vector purchase.

Photospin

Photospin concludes my list of 10 go-to microstock agencies for buying great valentine-themed creative assets. This merchant enables yearly subscriptions, and the smallest one is available for the price of $429. What is more, credit-based shopping has been replaced with advantageous single-file purchasing, whereby one item may cost as little as $2.

Take a moment to enjoy some samples of exquisite Valentine’s Day imagery, and remember that there are a lot more waiting where these came from.