SO, since DA has gone down the drain with stock searching - and because I always hit a wall trying to find the right stock for my breeds - I'm considering getting a stock subscription to something like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock. My question is... Is it worth it?

I really wish you could pay per image rather than having to do a subscription (seriously, I wanna thrash the jerk who came up with the whole subscription scam =_=), but that's not a thing anymore. Now you have to pay for 10 images a month and are locked in for a year. So if you don't download those 10 images, you're paying for resources you're not using.

BUT the stock has both quantity and quality. Which is probably hugely worth it.

BUT BUT I don't know if I'll need stock often enough to justify a subscription. I don't know if I'll end up downloading 10 images a month. And $30 a month is a lot to waste.

So are there other HP graphic artists who have stock subscriptions? And would you recommend them? What do you like about them, what do you dislike, do you enjoy having the stock more than you hate having to pay for it? xD

Lay it on me lol.

Ba-bump

I paid for a stock subscription from Adobe Stock back when I was very optimistic about my ability to commit to creative hobbies (ability = non-existant). It was a mistake for me but might not be for someone who actually uses the service.

What I will say from my experience is that I never ended up using it and it locked me into a year with a huge upfront cancellation fee which was very close to the amount of money I'd be paying for the subscription throughout the year. So triple check the cancellation clauses before signing up.

So, on iStock you can but single images for around £7 I believe? Alamy is about £12; which might be acceptable for one-offs but is gonna work out pretty expensive if you even want 2-3 within the space of a month.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to take the extreme route; paid £180 for 750 images from shutterstock (that's 20p per image). This is 100% a one-off (I'd be very impressed if I manage to get through them all within a year) and obviously isn't worth doing for everyone, but the quality and variety of the images is vastly superior to what you'll find as free stock (esp if looking for rare breeds and what not).

Now, that's not a small amount of money to spend and they do offer smaller packages (10, 50, 350 and 750 images per month); mine was a 'pay monthly' deal but I cancelled the auto-renew as soon as I'd paid for the subscription, giving me a month to choose & download those 750 images (after which those images can be redownloaded for free at any time). Not ideal for everyone, but as my plan was to quite literally stockpile, it worked for me.

In all, I agree; the subscription services suck and having to pay £12 for a single image is just ludicrous. But if you can afford spending money on a hobby (unless you're getting comms outside of HP as well) and are likely to be using them (I've done a heck of a lot of manips recently) then it's worth it, in my opinion.

-stalks thread to learn more because she's been considering stock subscription services too-

So I did the shutterstock thing once (when it was slightly cheaper) and the stock I got lasted me for literally years.
And as Uta indicated, you can get images saved and then use them later and cancel the subscription before the months is out.  It's about $200 USD.

Additionally, if you want to see the stock quality - well, you can get a 1 month free subscription and get 10 images.

I'm trying out the trial subscription with adobe stock just out of whim!  I just have to remember it's there, which is a major problem for me.

I just started a free trial for adobe myself, ill let you know in a month xD 

Edit: but I probably won't continue since it is just 10 images a month, but at the same time if you only look when you actually need it, then that might not be too bad, plus the assets on adobe roll over, so if you don't download any that month, they roll over to the next. 

Ooo rollovers are a good thing. That's a vote in Adobe Stock's favor. I might check them out. 

Edit: The rollover cap is 120 and the subscription is for a year but I'm gonna try it for a month and see what 10 images I can grab lmao. I already like the stock more on Adobe than Shutterstock.

Reckon I might try Adobe Stock as an option in the future, from the sounds of things. I do like that they allow rollovers.

i use unsplash and adobe stock. for me the $30 is worth it, but i also use 2-3 adobe applications at a time, and do more than just the photo manipulations, so there's that. the rollovers are super nice, but i honestly can't say i've been able to see it that often 😂😂
depending on what stock you're looking for, if it is for just a hobby, i like to looking through peoples favs on dA, and unsplash has some pretty good stock options as well. i've never used anything other than unsplash, adobe, and dA - adobe and unsplash more so than any other ones

I didn't continue with it, I noticed Adobestock and Unsplash had some of the same stock, and I didn't see the point if Unsplash was free?  But Adobestock has some really cool vectors and such, but not stuff I'd really use.