The other side of the coin is that, as an image seller, so far my royalties from Fotolia have nearly tripled since Adobe bought them out.
This is a good point.
The irony is not lost on me that when graphic artists complain about prices for clipart or photos, they are saying that the graphic artists who produce the pictures and artwork should make less money. At a dollar a download the original artist must have made practically nothing. I am reminded that the reason we have cheap iPhones is that the people putting them together work long hours for slave wages. When I first read about an artist boycott against Dollar Photo Club, I wondered if the end was in sight for them. The disappearance of DPC may be viewed as a simple market correction.
I am not really complaining about price. Cheapskate sign makers are almost as irritating as cheapskate customers. As professionals we deserve to be compensated as professionals. A medical doctor made a comment once to the effect that, "you are not paying me for my time, but for what I know." Is that not also true of us? We are more than hobbyists, aren't we? Imagine a world where, for the price of a stethoscope, anyone could hang out a shingle and call themselves a health professional.
Is 10 dollars too much to pay for a picture? No, really it isn't. You can't set up your own shoots for that price. It just means that a designer can't put a picture on a 45-dollar layout for business cards anymore. A knock-out sign shop selling banners for next to nothing will need to think twice before adding purchased clipart. And I will think twice about buying pictures for my blog.
The sign industry has gone through some big changes in my lifetime. The industry is drowning in poor design, so much so that bad layouts are viewed as normal. This, to me, is the biggest problem. But it's also getting harder to make a living in the business. I am glad there are still voices out there pushing for quality work and just compensation.
Brad
