Using Royalty-Free Images & Sounds For Your Projects

Not long ago friends of ours set out to revamp their business marketing message and as a part of that project they’d decided they’d update the Powerpoint presentation they often used for email marketing and were planning to put on their website.

So off they went, tweaking the message and building the Powerpoint – and in the end what they had was fun and punchy! They had chosen to use a well-known BTO song to accompany the message, and had worked some really fun photos in alongside the text areas.

Great job…just one problem – COPYRIGHT ISSUES! Without going into a big explanation of how copyright works, the point is that copyright issues can arise if you are using images or music in your marketing that you don’t have the rights to.

What does this mean to you? Don’t use images you find using Google Images! Or at least, don’t use them without first making sure they really are in the public domain and are free of copyright, or obtain written permission to use them.

In our web design & marketing projects (whether for clients or ourselves), we rarely use Google to find images for marketing for this very reason

So where does that leave you when it comes to images and sounds for your marketing pieces? In fact, there are many places where you can conveniently and affordably purchase royalty free stock photography for use in your projects.

WARNING: We’ll be the first to admit that cruising through stock libraries can be highly addictive, time consuming, and entertaining, so if you are prone to getting distracted from the task at hand we advise that you get out an egg timer and set it before you start!

With that said, whether you’re a do-it-yourselfer or are hiring someone to do graphic design work for you and need to supply the images you want them to use, these are just a few of our favorite libraries:

www.dreamstime.com
www.istockphoto.com
www.bigstockphoto.com
www.fotolia.com

In most cases the images cost $1 – $15 each depending on the format/size you need.
TIP: If you are printing the project you need to use 300dpi high resolution images for nice clear results….72dpi is fine for web viewing. Also sizing up an image is rarely a good idea so buy the image that comes closest to the dimensions you plan to use it at.

Each of these libraries have different Terms of Use, so be sure to read them before you purchase to ensure that your usage of the item is acceptable. In most cases, the terms are pretty flexible when it comes to using the images for marketing & packaging purposes, so long as you aren’t actually reselling the image itself.

Looking for royalty free sounds – here are a few sites we suggest:

www.audiobase.com
www.premiumbeat.com
www.soundsnap.com
www.soundloopstudio.com

For more specific information on copyright protection, www.whatiscopyright.org has a very educational write up. Another informative article on Copyright Violation can be found here…

As for our friends, thankfully they didn’t run into copyright issues because they found out about the problem with Googling for images and sounds to use before they rolled out the new marketing.