Use Stock Photos on Your Blog For Free with PicApp

By: Sophia Lucero | March 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment

It’s hard to find good images to spice up your blog posts. You probably use Google Image Search to do that, but you’re probably violating copyright laws if you used them for your blog without asking permission whatsoever. Or you visit stock photography websites, but when you realize you have to pay, you use the ugly-looking watermarked images instead.

PicApp is a stock photo site lets you use the best photos from the biggest names in photography like Getty Images completely free! Of course, there’s a trade-off.

First, images are embedded using JavaScript and Flash, just like videos. Why? The embedded image has ads, which appear below the a smaller verion of the image upon loading. Shortly after the image grows and covers the ads, but hovering your mouse on the embedded object makes the ads reappear. There’s also a toolbar at the top left for sharing options and image details.

The images don’t look that great. You get to embed in two sizes: for landscape photos it’s 357 or 420 pixels wide, for portrait photos it’s 287 or 338 pixels tall. Not very big. And there’s a lot of artifacts and other unpleasant details in the photos. But if you compare them to the quality of videos we’ve been enjoying on the web, there really isn’t much difference. We’ll have to wait until the high-definition revolution really goes mainstream before PicApp and Getty Images rethinks its average offer.

And what’s up with the slogan: “Because a picture’s worth!”

Overall, it’s great that big names in mainstream photojournalism is opening its database to the ordinary blogger. If you have a really tough time looking for photos that will fit your posts, you may just find PicApp an invaluable resource. It’s still in beta, meaning it’s a very young service and could improve vastly in the future, but one can only hope.

(Via)

Tags: images, photos

3 Comments

Use Stock Photos on Your Blog For Free with PicApp : PinoyBlogoSphere.com (PBS) Said,

March 24, 2008 @ 5:40 am

[...] PicApp is a stock photo site lets you use the best photos from the biggest names in photography like Getty Images completely free! Of course, there’s a trade-off. Find out here. [...]
Use Stock Photos on Your Blog For Free with PicApp by The Philippines According to Blogs Said,

March 24, 2008 @ 5:40 am

[...] PicApp is a stock photo site lets you use the best photos from the biggest names in photography like Getty Images completely free! Of course, there’s a trade-off. Find out here. [...]
Luis Cruz Said,

April 6, 2008 @ 9:29 am

Try searching flickr for CC licensed images. If you really want to play it safe, search for images that allow commercial use. I haven’t had any issues with the quality of the images there.