Cutcaster provides a wide range of high-quality, affordable stock photos, royalty free images and stock vectors. These images are perfect for websites, promotional products, advertising, publishing, or any other commercial use. Click the following links, to learn more about our latest website update regarding our image search engine and checkout area.

How to Enter:

For your chance to win a Cutcaster account loaded with 25 free credits, just do either (or both) of the following:

1. Add a comment below OR to our Cutcaster page at Facebook, stating what the first image you will download from Cutcaster if you win. Include the URL of the image as well. You could write this for example: “The first image I will download is this cool vintage gramophone: http://cutcaster.com/photo/100269016-Gramophone/“
2. Tweet this message:  @Cutcaster Stock Photos Giveaway: Win a @cutcaster Account with 25 Free Credits! http://bit.ly/opaM5u 

If you post a comment and send a tweet, you’ll double your chances of winning because we will enter you twice!

On Wednesday, September 21st, we’ll pick the 5 winners at random and announce them here.

The winners have been picked and will be notifed by email. Thanks for participating and for those of you who didn’t win, there will be more chances this Fall.

We wanted to make changes that would translate to real improvement for all our users. Our search engine now helps buyers find, filter and download relevant images more quickly, and we’ve made it easier for our contributors to sell their images and earn good money doing it.

We’ve now combined an easy-to-use search interface with a highly accurate contextual search engine that disambiguates word meanings. As the user types in keywords, the engine determines their meaning and the intention of the searcher to provide more accurate image results. As the searcher applies additional filters—for number of people, orientation or dominant color, for example— search results are updated immediately, making it easy to focus and expand results as necessary. If a keyword has multiple meanings, a user will be able to select their meaning by clicking on the keyword to choose the right meaning. We do all the rest.

The checkout process has been improved as well with simplified pricing, shown in credits and dollars, and the introduction of PayPal. Our goal was to make downloading images as seamless as possible for people. Users don’t even have to register to buy, and now they have even more secure payment options.

For its contributors, Cutcaster has increased its royalty payments to one of the highest rates in the industry. Our rate are going from 50% to 55%. We want to continue offering excellent images from great contributors, and our rates help us attract and choose the best. At a time when other sites are reducing their royalty percentages and payouts, we’re increasing them.

A greatly simplified user interface facilitates how contributors upload their images and view their image stats. We will have the FTP upload option enabled again after next week but you can upload images now via the upload area in your account. The whole site is optimized for our sellers now. There’s no guesswork, from signing up to providing the right tax forms, to getting paid.

We hope you enjoy all the improvements and we welcome your feedback.

To expand your portfolio into an untapped arena of stock photography, we urge you to create a portion of your portfolio that really shows your “outside of the box” thinking, i.e. get granddad out there on water-skis, or place your old credit cards in your kitchen’s blender or use Photoshop to create unique situations in your images by combining different elements. Get as creative as possible. Take chances and see what works and doesn’t work. Then carefully keyword and upload your new creative shots to Cutcaster.

Here are some examples of pictures we currently have but we’d love to see more of this type of photography and illustrations:

Crescendo Collection

We strive to provide our picture buyers with the unique images they seek. Thanks for your help creating more jaw dropping images that will impress our buyers and increase your long-term earnings potential!

Regards,

Your Cutcaster team.

What is photo copyright?

Copyright is defined as the exclusive set of rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. In addition, any of these rights can be licensed, transferred and/or assigned to another party like what takes place at Cutcaster when we license or sell one of your images royalty free. Copyright only lasts for a certain time period, after which the work is said to enter the public domain. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works protects any creator of “original works of authorship” under it’s copyright law which protects works in all 160 countries that are party to the Convention, as well as various other laws such as the US copyright act.

Copyright law has been internationally standardized, lasting between fifty and one hundred years from the author’s death, or a shorter period of time for corporate authorship or anonymous works. Generally, copyright is enforced as a civil matter, though some jurisdictions do apply criminal sanctions.

Before 1989 all published works, in the US, had to contain a copyright notice, the (c) symbol, followed by the publication date and copyright owner’s name, to be protected by copyright. This is no longer the case and use of a copyright notice is now optional in the US, though you will still see them used.

Does copyright apply to all images?

Yes, every image out there from the time it is created becomes automatically protected under copyright laws. One should know, that copyright law is different from country to country, and a copyright notice is required in about 20 countries for a work to be protected under copyright laws.

What is copyright infringement?

Copyright infringement, copyright piracy or copyright violation, is the unauthorized use of photos covered by copyright law, in a way that violates one of the copyright owners’ exclusive rights. Imagery infringement may include:

• Using the image beyond the scope of a license or permission granted
• Recreating an image identically with another photographer
• Use of whole or part of an image without permission i.e. “mash-up” or derivative work
• Art rendering, where someone adapts an image without permission

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?

Any pending images from before the switch, images uploaded after the 21st of Dec 2010 or images, which were previously accepted but missing from your portfolio on the new site, will be moved to your portfolio by Friday. Once these files show up, your earnings from any sales or referrals will be updated automatically. We couldn’t attach a sale to referral earnings to a file/file # that wasn’t currently on the new database/site. We don’t have our pending or rejection area set up in users’ accounts just yet or an area to edit your files but that is coming very shortly. If you would like to change your prices please email webmaster@cutcaster.com with your account URL and price you would like to change the medium sized file to.

In the meantime, the option to upload images via FTP will be released early next week to help with bulk uploading. Do not worry about your pending files from before the switch. We have them saved and will be reviewed shortly. Thank you for your patience. We hope you enjoy the new site and please send us feedback to webmaster@cutcaster.com.

Business People Images

Cutcaster provides some of the best photos and illustrations, which are perfect for creating eLearning simulations or building other engaging interactions? Cutcaster offers royalty free images that can be used in as many e-learning online training courses as you can create for only a few dollars. For our first elearning image series we chose to do signs and symbols. This is the second elearning photo lightbox we are releasing that includes everything from corporate office buildings and office interior backgrounds you can use to create user scenarios, to business teams and people, to something as basic as a call center employee or beautiful woman with a phone headset, to just businessmen or businesswomen in general.  We offer a wide variety of affordable royalty free images and illustrations that can be used in course guides, conversational situations and case studies.

Check out our other call center employee pictures, Phone Person Pictures, People on the Phone Photos, Business Women Using Headset, Business Teams, Objects Signs, Health Hospitals and Doctors’ Offices, Elearning Concepts Promotional, Elearning Home Exteriors, Office Interiors, Retail Stores.

Signs and Symbols Stock Photos

Need images or graphics that are perfect for building eLearning simulations or other engaging interactions? All our royalty free images can be used in any e-learning online training course. We are starting a lightbox series of elearning images that will include everything from corporate office buildings and office interior backgrounds you can use to create user scenarios, paper and notes pictures that you can write a message on or call center employees and doctors / nurses who can be used in course guides, conversational situations and case studies. Our next series will highlight business teams, business people and corporate settings so be on the look out for that series of images.

The first in this elearning series is Signs and Symbols. This is a specific collection of sign images and symbol illustrations that can be used in online training courses.

We have additional elearning photos which inslcude call center employee pictures, Health Hospitals and Doctors’ Offices, Phone Person Pictures, Business Women Using Headset, Retail Stores, Business Teams, Signs Object, Elearning Concepts Promotional, Elearning Home Exteriors, Office Interiors and People Phone Photos.

Are you looking for the perfect image? Cutcaster helps you find the most relevant pictures fast and within your budget. To find images at Cutcaster all you need to do is perform a keyword search and then use the advance search options to filter down your image search results. Quickly browse through our growing stock library using our Advanced Search tools to find just the right image.

Buying Stock Images Has Never Been Easier

Once you are ready to download and checkout with your image, just choose the photo payment method that’s right for you! For your convenience and affordability, you can pay via any major credit card, use site credits, or pay via PayPal. We are extremely flexible and can tailor licensing packages to meet any creative or editorial need. Just ask. Make yourself at home browsing around our site. Most photos cost only a few dollars and are fully released and checked to ensure the highest quality.

Here is a breakdown of our flexible payment options:

* Pay With a Credit Card. Download royalty free photos with any major credit card.

* Pay by Credits. Our popular Credit Plans lets you purchase credits, Cutcaster’s virtual currency, to be used toward individual images with either Standard or Extended License Agreements; The more you buy the more you save.

* Paypal- Want to pay via Paypal? Send us an email to webmaster@cutcaster.com with the size and url of the file you wish to purchase and we will send you an invoice and the file via email immediately. Subscription Plan.

Joining Cutcaster is absolutely FREE!

Create a Caption

1. “That was the best sex I ever had…” –David

2. “And another thing!!!” –Michael Rhian Driscoll

3. Paris Hilton’s Choked Fried Chicken … dress, goggles and accessories sold separately. –Monkey

Congrats, you just won yourselves Cutcaster credit!

Thanks to all our participants.  Stay tuned for the next caption contest.