In addition to becoming one of the leading online stock library for royalty free images, Cutcaster also offers free photos and free stock vectors to customers from all over the world looking for outstanding visual art to help tell their story or represent a brand.

Check out all the free pictures that Cutcaster offers to members and non-members for immediate download and if you are interested in any of the above images you can download them from the below links.

http://cutcaster.com/vector/800967545-Orange-background-with-flowers/

http://cutcaster.com/photo/800856373-Blond-woman-with-plaited-hair/

http://cutcaster.com/photo/100500074-Lower-Manhattan-Skylines/

http://cutcaster.com/photo/100625693-Statue-of-Liberty/

http://cutcaster.com/photo/100622734-Flames-Fire-of-Hell/

http://cutcaster.com/photo/100714026-Young-Lamb-On-Green-Grass-Cornwall-UK/

http://cutcaster.com/photo/100523643-Wood/

http://cutcaster.com/photo/800906270-elections-2012-one-way-post/

http://cutcaster.com/photo/100460264-Head-of-Moray-eel/

Online today, most everyone is using social media to connect with friends, business associates or companies. Social media is defined by some as media for social interaction, using highly scalable communication techniques and information that is easily accessible to anyone. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue like we have seen on sites like Twitter and Facebook. For all our users who spend countless hours on social media sites, we created a collection of social media pictures and icons that can be downloaded and used on your blog, any social media site, or company website to make your ideas and brand stand out.

Check out our social media picture collection now.

Photo Checklist

The checklist of considerations and questions below are important to think about when you found an image online and want to use it for whatever creative or editorial reason. Here is a checklist of things to ask yourself when licensing and using an image:

Ask yourself, how am I using the image exactly?

If the image is going to be used on a t-shirt design, within a mobile app, on a road-side billboard, for an e-device, on your client’s homepage or within a college textbook just to name a few, you will want to make sure that the license covers your particular usage. If you don’t know if you are covered, then don’t assume. You can always call up the photographer or stock photo agency to ask if your specific usage is covered by the license they offer. Better to be safe then to assume.

I need to be able to use an image forever. Will the license I buy ever expire?

This is very important. Start by asking yourself, “how long do I want to use a particular image for any project?” Check if the photo license expires in the future or grants you rights to use the image ‘in perpetuity’, which is just legal jargon that means the license doesn’t expire. Always check to make sure there isn’t a time restriction on your usage. Royalty free licenses are almost always ‘in perpetuity’ and won’t expire. Rights managed licenses have restrictions and limitations on how long you can use an image. Make sure you record if the license expires on a certain date and save that information along with the image. If someone created a website for you make sure that the images they selected for you don’t expire. The last thing you want is an unexpected bill or an email from an angry photographer or agency questioning why you are still using an image, whose license has expired.

Does the amount of times I print the image matter?

This is a good time to double-check how many times you want to print, reproduce or otherwise use an image. This is sometimes called “print run.” For example if you are going to print an image 10,000 times on a poster or use the image for a book cover that will be printed over 250,000 times, you want to make sure that the license doesn’t have a “print run restriction” that might require you to pay extra for any excess prints you make over the allotted amount. If you know your usage will exceed the number of times you can print it according to the license, you can purchase an additional license exemption in some cases called an extended license so you increase your print run to unlimited.

Am I licensing Royalty Free images or Rights Managed images?

Knowing the difference between these two license types is extremely important and will affect how your able to use the image. Clicking the checkout button and paying for the image doesn’t mean that you can use it anyway you like. You need to know the rights you are obtaining through the license.

If I use a subscription service to license images am I still allowed to use the images I downloaded after my subscription ends?

No, unless you used a specific image for a project during the time of your subscription. In that case, you can re-use the image but if you do not use the image during the time of your subscription and then use it after your subscription ends you are in violation of your licensing agreement and subscription sites will send a team of lawyers after you. You have to be very careful of subscription sites and their license. A person who cancels their stock subscription can not stockpile, download, or otherwise store images not used within a few months of the expiration of their subscription. This means you can not use any image which was downloaded but not used in a personal project or clients project during the time of your subscription. All subscription sites have a provision that limits how you can use images you downloaded during the subscription period that have not been used in a project. This is called image warehousing.

Ask yourself, Are there recognizable people, famous landmarks or artistic works (such as paintings or sculptures) in the image?

For commercial use, you need to double-check that your supplier holds the appropriate model or property release for that image. A simple email asking the photographer or agency for confirmation that they hold the releases is a good start.

Does the photographer or stock agency offer legal protection with the image license?

You will want to find out who assumes the liability and costs if a claim arises and you have to go to court. Does the license that you are considering buying cover you from these types of claims? Ask yourself and check the license to determine what kinds of claims are covered by the legal protection.

Where is a good place to ask for advice if you are not sure?

Stock Photo License is a good place to start for information and you should bookmark the resource and link to it from your site to help others. You can email them at team@stockphotolicense.com or ask them a question on Twitter by using @stockphotousage. Next, you could contact the photographer or stock agency. However, the best advice is to contact your legal counsel if you have specific questions.

What is royalty free?

If you are looking for amazing royalty free photos and vectors please visit Cutcaster.com.

Here are a few of our newest lightboxes created by our creative team.

Traveling by Air. Let these pictures from above lift you above the earth and get you that aerial pictures from high above the ground of cities, bodies of water, buildings or New York City aerials pictures. While you are up there, if you need pictures of globes or Mother Earth, Cutcaster has a wide selection. If you dont like air travel, then drive off with these automobile pictures that will get your creative engines purring like a lion from the moment you start browsing.

Or browse a few of the selected picture collections below.

It’s almost Mother’s day. Don’t forget

This lightbox is full of modern day Health Workers.

Love these cute and funny animal pictures

If you need outstanding 3D illustrations, we’ve got plenty.

Different parts of a body, that even we didn’t know existed. Check out these Facial Expressions after some folks saw them

Everybody loves a Party or even better the Dance-move pictures from the after-party.

Cutcaster has all your Health and Medicine Pictures.

Find Nuclear Energy and Radiation photos and clipart.

Are you happy with your image agency?

What features or services do image buyers like and want from photographers or stock agencies? What gets them coming back to your portfolio or the agency that reps your images?

Today, Cutcaster is releasing the comments that some images buyers told us during last year’s survey. We took 10 of the most popular comments and arranged them below in a random order to show you what features or services they like an agency to offer. The question was actually a two-part question and was “What do you like most/least about the stock photo sites that you work with?” Later this week, we will share the things they didn’t like about their current stock image agency. The survey was completed by 344 image users who had used Cutcaster or were working on the stock image business and were mostly from the US or Canada.

Top 10 things image buyers said they liked which their stock agency provided.

1. Current and wide selection of images from international sources at reasonable prices.

2. Special picture collection pricing for royalty free or rights managed photos.

3. Stock agency websites that can show an entire photo purchase history with a simple click to avoid duplicate image purchases.

4. With current rates that image researchers get, we need to work FAST. The most important features for a stock site are direct downloading and embedded metadata. If you do not offer these two things, you are a 2nd tier vendor.

5. Picture pop-up windows to review images instead of having to use “back” button.

6. Advanced features like search filters when we need to give restrictions.

7. Love seeing Creative Inspiration.

8. Great sales help when a user encounters a problem. (From Cutcaster: Most image buyers didn’t say they needed a specific sales representative to help them use an agency)

9. High resolution comp images with metadata embedded.

10. Agencies with multicultural, disabilities, youth, and well executed food shots most cited image needs.

Overall, most image buyers stressed that they needed the highest quality images, fast / accurate search results and lower pricing which is understandable in the current economic environment.

If you are an image buyer, what features would you like to see a stock agency adopt to make your life easier?

Over the next two weeks, Cutcaster will be releasing a large amount of data from our picture buyer survey to help those interested in the stock photography market or using Cutcaster. If you use this information please link back to Cutcaster (http://cutcaster.com or this blog post). The survey was completed by 344 image users mostly in the US and Canada who use royalty free or rights managed images. The following results were collected from their responses. Note: Click on the thumbnail images to see the survey results in a larger window.

What category best describes the type of company or organization for which you work

The above shows what type of individuals, companies or industries are buying images at Cutcaster.

When purchasing digital images and illustrations, which of the following activities do you perform?

The above chart shows what role the image buyer plays in their organization’s decision making process for searching, obtaining pricing, purchasing and approval process for using Cutcaster. It will give you an idea for what type of decision makers are coming to Cutcaster to find images and download them on behalf of themselves or their firm.

How many people work at your company?

The above chart shows the average size of the firm that a buyer works for.

How frequently do you purchase stock photography in a typical year?

How frequently are image researchers or buyers downloading royalty free images or clipart per year. We can see that a very large percentage of responders said they license more than 50 images a year.

Image buyers annual budget

Check out how much a typical picture buyer spends on a single image or clipart download from a stock agency. The above chart shows image buyers spend per single image. Remember that this includes both royalty free and rights managed licensing (as well as free).

Next week, Cutcaster will release more information regarding what decisions go into choosing an agency / image library, what picture buyers like most and least about their stock agencies they work with currently and what things image buyers want to see an agency do but aren’t at the moment.

Image buyers needed speed. They needed a top notch but simple to use image search. And they need great royalty free images at affordable prices. We pulled up in the ‘Ferrari of Search Engines’ with the passenger side-door wide open. Our image search tool is now superior in speed, accuracy and ease of use, freeing up users to focus on their creative projects.

Notable site improvements include faster image loading time, increased functionality, improved site layout, cleaner architecture and a simplified design that lets buyers focus on the image buying experience. As always, browsing by image categories or searching by keywords on Cutcaster is completely free and you don’t need to sign-up. When a user searches with keywords, they can then filter their search options by: categories, colors, contributor’s name, vertical or horizontal orientation, picture resolution, price, relevance and image format — including jpeg and/or vector files. The moment a user finds an image that meets their needs, they can further refine their selection from the “Similar Pictures” filter or by choosing another image from the same cluster of images. Picture buyers can immediately purchase images with any major credit card or use site credits to download the images, which comes with a record of it’s metadata.

While some photo agencies were pinching pennies from their users’ pockets or others were closing their doors because of the economy, the Cutcaster team dedicated themselves over the last 9 months to learning more about their customers’ needs, learning more about online image search and building one of the fastest and simplest user experiences for searching and downloading royalty free images.

Don’t ‘Betta’ against the Phoenix. We have risen from the ashes of our old site and now look confidently towards the future.

About Cutcaster
Cutcaster is a simple-to-use website for intelligently searching and downloading royalty free photos, hi-res pictures, stock vectors and free stock images for use on websites, presentations, newsletters, ads, books or any commercial project. Browse our enormous image categories, search faster with our intuitive search engine and download affordable creative imagery for as little as a few dollars.

Visit http://cutcaster.com/ to experience the dramatic improvement.

We had a busy weekend at Cutcaster. First, we spent a good amount of programming time last week and this weekend making a necessary updates to our search engine and how Solr, which is used to aid search on our site, was interacting with and re-indexing our photo database. One problem that we noticed was that all files that were accepted and on the live site were not showing up in search results when they should have. This problem was corrected and all files now show up during search when they should be returned. Another issue was search slowness which we are constantly working on and is still a work in progress. We also tweaked with some of the search weightings and pricing on the site. Let us know if any of your files are not showing up on the site when you do a keyword search.

UPDATE-

We have completed the wire-frames for the new site redesign and are about 60% of the way complete with the new code for the backend and new functionality. Exciting stuff. I will post some of the new wireframes that will show you the new look but won’t give away a few of the cool new features we have in store. We are hoping to release the new site by end of December or early January so be on the lookout.