Numerous image-licensing services offer royalty-free stock artwork. Shutterstock, iStock, and Adobe Stock are three examples.
These vendors usually offer their images by subscription. But you will be obtaining the images legally, without infringing copyrights. In fact, I use this as a selling point, that is, that we don't steal artwork, which would leave our customers open to a charge of infringement.
As with any image-licensing service, of course, you must abide by the user agreement. For example, most of these services forbid you to use their images in pornography. They will also typically prohibit the use of their artwork as part of a logo or trademark. And there might be limits on how many times you can use an image. But, generally, these services offer images that you could never obtain on your own for the price.
We subscribe to Adobe Stock and I can never use all the images we have available through our subscription with them. If a client brings me an image from another service, say, Shutterstock, I can often find the exact same image on Adobe Stock using their image-search feature. The images are always royalty-free, meaning that we don't need to pay the original artist every time we use an image. Adobe Stock takes care of payments to individual artists.
"Clipart" has come a long way from the early days when you bought big, expensive binders full of camera-ready art from companies like Dynamic Graphics of Peoria, Illinois.
Stock image services allow sign shops with no talent for drawing to include quality artwork on practically every job.
Brad in Kansas City
