Website Watch: Stock.XCHNG
Published Jan 17, 2008
One of the big problems for people who produce content for print or the web is to find a source of photographs that are free or inexpensive and which are easy to search.
This site allows for uploading and exchange (hence the site's name) of all manner of photographs. It's been running since 2001 and so has an extensive database of suitable material in a good variety of categories.
Firstly, the legal information. Go to 'Help' at the bottom of the page and, when the help page opens, choose item number 8 that will open to display the legal information. In the lower menu, there is also a link to a very useful FAQ.
If you want simply to browse, click 'Browse' in the left hand menu and, when the page opens, choose from the categories on the right, clicking the '+' button to expand. For a more 'in depth' search choose the 'Advanced search' from the horizontal tabs and this will provide you with many more options.
Statistics on the far right of the tabs is an interesting page
Statistics on the far right of the tabs is an interesting page that shows the numbers of downloads per country and city along with other useful information.
The 'Tutorials' tab holds a list of short tutorials and howtos on a variety of photo related subjects and is worth a look, even if you are an experienced photo-manipulator.
Blogs takes you to the sort of page you expect and, again, it is worth setting aside a few minutes to read the blogs and worth checking them at each visit for interesting content.
The search button at the top left allows you to search quickly for a photograph and is useful for an initial look or quick search. This search button also allows you to search for photos or photographers by user, file, camera, country and city.
In use, the site is easy and intuitive to use, pages open easily and quickly and, at the time we were there, everything worked except for the 'randomizer' tab which was not working.
Overall this is an excellent resource for anyone wanting occasional photos for a website or blog or the writer needing images for articles and even for the semi-professional needing high resolution photographs on a regular basis.
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