Shutterstock

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shutterstock is a micropayment stock photo website, founded in 2003, which sells images by subscription. Major competitors include istockphoto, and photos.com. Shutterstock was started by Jon Oringer, photographer and serial entrepeneur.

Shutterstock now provides more than 1,200,000 royalty-free images to subscribers, contributed by over 40,000 photographers (as of Nov 2006).

Subscribers can buy either a one month, three months, six months, or one year subscription - and download up to 25 images per day (750 per month). They may continue to use them past the membership period.

Contributing photographers must apply before they are eligible to upload their images. The applicants must submit 10 pictures that are screened for quality and suitability. At least 7 pictures must be approved for the contributor account to become active.

Once approved, photographers can begin uploading their work through the website. They supply keywords, categorize the images, and submit them to the "inspection queue," where each and every image is examined to ensure that it meets the standards of quality, usefulness and copyright and trademark laws.

Shutterstock also sells vector graphics made in programs like Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand; Macromedia Flash elements and raster illustrations created in 3d graphics programs or bitmap editors like Adobe Photoshop.