The stock photo library on Planet Stock Photo has access to millions of pictures. Want to know how everything works? Check out How to Use Planet Stock Photos and How to Improve Your Designs with Free Stock Photos, and then keep reading for tips on choosing the perfect picture.
What is a Stock Photo?
Stock photos are often used in projects by designers, teachers, people who work in social media, and more. These photos can be used in anything from pitch decks to talks.

Over the past few years, there have been huge changes in the kinds of available stock photos. Images have changed from stiff and staged with old standards to beautiful, real, emotional, and varied.
Today’s stock market is made up of casual, clean pictures of real people in real settings.
Finding the right stock photo for your brand can be a big pain in the neck. First, there are so many that it’s hard to know where to begin. And second, even if you can narrow your search, the pictures that come up are often cheesy, stiffly posed, or have the wrong labels.
Helpful Tips
When picking a stock photo, keep these simple rules in mind:
- Choose pictures that show what you’re trying to say, even if it means saying it out loud or making people feel something. Don’t just choose something “pretty.”
- Use pictures with good lighting, ones clearly taken with good lighting in mind. And make sure the setting is the same in all of the photos you choose, so they look like a real set.
- Use high-resolution, high-quality pictures. Anything less could hurt your brand.
- Use images that are useful and up-to-date.
- You can change pictures in Canva or Photoshop by adding invisible color overlays, blurring, or cropping them.
Not sure if the stock picture you want to use has been used too many times? Tineye is a handle that lets you look for a stock photo and see how many times it has been used and a list of all the websites where it has been used. This could give you an idea of how other people are using the picture and how you are showing it.
Get permission
Even though a “free” service may give stock images, they may still have restrictions on how they can be used or copyright terms. Make sure to read the fine print. Some sites have free, 100% royalty-free pictures that you can use however you want. Other sites may have free pictures that you can use as long as you give credit to the shooter.
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Figure out the feeling you want to Convey
Your picture should tell your brand’s story, so what feeling do you want to show with the stock photos you pick? Write down feelings like happiness, confidence, joy, and regret, and then type those words into your stock picture editor. Check out the photos that come up and narrow down your choices from there, such as by picking only black-and-white photos or images without people.
Copy Space
Many designers, marketers, and people who use social media look for empty spaces in pictures where they can put text. For these kinds of customers, leaving clear space on a picture where text can be added is very helpful.
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Have an Idea
Before you start taking photos, you should clearly know who your audience is and how your photos might be used.
Adding artistic layers to the shoot that fit with the idea is important. What feelings, moods, or parts of a story would you like to see in your stock photos? What colors can be used to make the pictures look like they belong together and help tell the story? Putting together a mood board with these ideas is a great way to decide how your shoot will look and feel.
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Take Different Shots
People who buy stock photos usually look through a number of photos from the same photo shoot to find the right one for their needs. Using your shot list as a guide, take pictures of your set-up from different views and in different ways. For example, you can change the direction and the aspect ratio. This will give you a number of photos to choose from.
Be Unique
When people buy stock pictures, they often look for images that fit their content needs and are interesting and unique.
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It’s important to give the pictures you make something new and interesting. Adding your style to your photos will help you stand out from the crowd and catch the eye of potential customers, which will increase your chances of making sales.
Describe the Look
How are you trying to make people feel with this picture? Edgy? Sophisticated? Fast? Trustworthy? Figure out what you want the picture to say about your feelings. For instance, you might want to tell people that your product or service saves them time. Which picture do you think would make the viewer feel the most?
How to tell if a picture is staged or real
Look for pictures that seem to show a moment in time, especially if you want to find pictures of people. Keeping away from pictures that look too perfect or “posed” will help your brand seem real.
Avoid pictures with Emptiness
If you want to add text or graphics to your photos, look for photos with enough empty room to add these things without making the whole thing look too crowded. What is “negative space”? It’s the space around the main subject of a picture, and it lets your eye “breathe” because it’s not crowded with other things that want your attention.
Check out the accounts of the leaders your audience follows and pay attention to how they look. Then, choose pictures that will look good on the influencer’s feed and don’t go against the style and look of your brand.
Don’t ignore stock Movies
You can find a good stock video if you don’t have much money or time to make the original movie.
Even though these videos can’t replace product reviews or live videos, they can help explain things that aren’t as specific. For example, you could show a picture of your target audience in the movie to show that your brand is related to them.
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Avoid deep editing and hyper-soft Skin
If the editing is too obvious, the design won’t look good. The skin should look like it came from a real person. This means the appearance can be fixed but shouldn’t be removed.
Have a look at Illustrations
Illustrations, collages, and motion can help ads stand out in the news feed, which is mostly made up of photos and videos.
Also, pictures are often more trustworthy than photos of models that have been touched up. And for some brands, graphics and drawings can be the best way.
Avoid “stock Smiles”
“Typical stock photos” show people with fake smiles and poses like mannequins, overly active gestures, or facial expressions. Users are getting tired of fake-looking shots that don’t say anything. You can always find pictures like this on microstock, but you can also find more natural and interesting photos. Curators on stock sites make special collections of high-quality pictures and videos to make it easier for people to find what they want.
Look for Real People and Poses
When looking for stock photos, keep an eye on the people in the pictures. Most of us don’t always sit up straight and smile. Agree?
But it’s very normal to find stock photos with these generic features. Try to find pictures where the people look spontaneous and not like they were posed.
- Do they look like real people, or are they just models?
- Do they have great hair, teeth, and clothes?
- How real do their poses look?
When picking a picture, look for real-life settings and people who show a little about who they are.
Copyrights and model releases Need to Respect
Remember that once you’ve found the perfect photo or video, you should check the copyrights and license and see if the people in the picture have permitted you to use the photo (called a “model release”).
Some stock picture sites offer “free” photos, but there may be rules about how they can be used. For example, some licenses only let you use photos for personal use, don’t let you change the photos, or require you to give credit to the photographer. So, make sure to carefully read the license to make sure that the content can be used in the way you want.
Don’t change the Style
You need stock photos and videos matching your brand’s visual style to be uniform and easily recognizable.
Many tips can help you change stock pictures to fit your style. And we want to give you some.
Premium Stock Photos
Using a premium stock site like Getty Images or iStock will help you find the kind of picture you want. Filters reduce the number of search results. For example, one filter could let you choose between vertical, horizontal, or landscape pictures. This feature is helpful when looking for images for certain styles, like hero images. You won’t have to crop or change the image in an awkward way to make it fit your design.
Higher Quality
Low-quality pictures are less interesting and look less professional than high-quality ones. A blurry picture that isn’t well-lit can send the wrong message and make your project less effective as a whole.
High-quality images are well-lit, don’t have any flaws or distracting parts, and face the right way for the area. They will be cropped or put together in a way that makes it clear to the normal person what the main point of the picture is.
Get people’s Feelings
It’s important not to forget how your picture choices make people feel. Many people make choices based on how they feel about something. We can easily understand how other people feel because we can’t help but feel the same way. We’ve all seen ads asking for money to help abused animals or poor people in faraway places. Those pictures pull at your heart. They were picked because they would make people feel something.
Don’t Forget the Size & Format
Don’t forget about the size and format of your images, and make sure they are optimized for each site you use. You don’t want your amazing photo selection to be ruined because it’s too small or too big for the site. And no one wants to see those awful “image compression artifacts.” Yuck!
Taking the time to make sure your photo is formatted and styled correctly will keep the quality of your project and help things go smoothly as you share your ideas.
Conclusion
Finding the right picture for your post, website, or other project can be hard. When you start your search, have a plan and take your time. Focus on the feelings and setting you want to show and look for natural-looking pictures that fit your idea. The result will make you happy.
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