If you’ve ever searched for royalty-free images to purchase for your website, you may already have discovered that it’s easy to become caught up looking for images for hours and hours, and still not find that one special image you are looking for.
The trick is to find the right keyword combination: the one that will yield appropriate (and provocative) images that you can purchase for your website — images that will complement the information that you provide on your web pages, and set you apart from your competition.
Consider keyword phrases that are specific to your industry or the service that you provide. Clues as to what words might be appropriate might be contained in your site description or on the About Us page of your website.
In general, it’s better to invest more time and energy into selecting a wide variety of keywords phrases, rather than simply going through pages and pages of images for one or two keyword searches. Be sure to write down keyword phrases that yield good results: it’s easy to forget them.
Specifying the proportions of the image that you desire can help to narrow down the search quickly. Royalty-free image websites usually contain “advanced search” options where you can specify portrait, landscape or panoramic format (panoramic views can be especially helpful in developing mastheads).
The word isolated, when used in combination with other words, will yield images that can be used against transparent backgrounds, allowing for a more seamless look and feel. For example, try entering
apple isolated
into a Google image search. In your search results, you will see many images of apples against a uniform, white background. The uniform background color makes it possible for you to select just the apple itself, instead of having to select the entire image.
Whenever you search for royalty-free images, be sure to keep track of the image numbers that are used to identify the images that you want to consider. It’s very easy to forget which images you wanted, and then later, when you come back to look at the images you selected, to forget where they were, and then to have to start searching again from scratch. Lightboxes are useful for keeping track of images that you may want to consider. Warning: sometimes images may be withdrawn from royalty-free image websites after you have chosen them, but before you have purchased the rights — if you absolutely need a specific image in order to complete your website design, consider purchasing the rights to that image sooner, rather than later.
Avoid search words and phrases that are too general — the more specific you can be in your selection of keywords, the more likely you are to find interesting material.
You can make cost effective choices by knowing in advance how much detail you need (and how much you don’t need) for the images you purchase. For website purposes, 72 d.p.i. is sufficient. In general, it’s better to purchase images that are slightly larger than what you need, rather than slightly smaller.
Some royalty-free image websites are:
istockphoto.com
shutterstock.com
gettyimages.com
Questions? Contact Chicago Web Designer Christopher Merrill.


















