The PowerPoint® Blog

I work with PowerPoint on a daily basis and I am very honored to be a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP. We have a talented team of presentation designers at TLC Creative Services and ThePowerPointBlog is our area to highlight PowerPoint tips, tricks, examples and tutorials. Enjoy! Troy Chollar

StockExpert – Images and Video

StockExpert seems similiar to iStockPhoto when I do a search – lots of the same or similiar images. They are all good quality and the pricing is good (or looking better as sites like iStockPhoto slowly raise their rates). One new feature is the selection of videos – which will be more important with the release of PowerPoint 2010 and the whole world goes video crazy. The search engine is intuitive and gives more precise results than some others – this may be because StockExpert was acquired by Jupiter Images who injected much of there meta tagging and search technology.

Raster/Photo images: Yes
Vector images: Yes
Video: Yes
Audio: No
Pay Per Image: Yes – approx. $2 for standard PPT use (small, 800px)
Subscription Download: Yes (eg. 1 year unlimited = $1,500)

Test Search Results:
1. “Fast Car” = 4,449 results
2. “Medical Consultation” = 958 results

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:36:21-07:00October 2nd, 2009|Resource/Misc|

Photos.com (and Clipart.com)

Photos.com is venerable, being one of the few companies around before the internet. I have a collection of (costly) Photo CDs from them. And if you every purchased one of the bright boxes full of “4 Million Images of CD/DVD” you know photos.com. Of course, that long history means some of the images are a bit dated, or perhaps seen in many other layouts over the years.

But the images are good quality, the search is nice and the thumbnails easy to review and use. The subscription rates are some of the best, so another reason you see the images a lot. You can also get some things here not available at others: a sound effects library, custom fonts and Flash animations.

Raster/Photo images: Yes
Vector images: Yes
Video: Yes
Audio: Yes
Pay Per Image: Yes – approx. $5 for standard PPT use (‘multimedia’, 500-800px)
Subscription Download: Yes (eg. 1 year unlimited of photo images only = $450 OR photos+vector+Flash+audio+fonts = $1,200)

Test Search Results:
1. “Fast Car” = 4,670 results
2. “Medical Consultation” = 7,348 results

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:36:55-07:00September 30th, 2009|Resource/Misc|

Getty Images – Real People, Royalty Free

Getty Images is an industry force, owning many of the other services, used by major media (newspaper, magazine, TV) and the place to get images of real (famous) people, real-life video and audio. This is the benchmark for professional quality images and breadth of search options. It does come at a price, but you definitely get what is paid for. Everyone should click the “Search Tips” button and read how to maximize search results (same tips apply to virtually all sites).

Raster/Photo images: Yes
Vector images: Yes
Video: Yes
Audio: Yes
Pay Per Image: Yes – approx. $35-150 ($35 = “web & Multimedia” 413px)
Subscription Download: Yes (this goes to photos.com – one of the many they own)

Test Search Results:
1. “Fast Car” = 5,301 results
2. “Medical Consultation” = 11,616 results

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:37:23-07:00September 28th, 2009|Resource/Misc|

Dreamstime Images

Dreamstime has been around for a while, but I do not hear a lot of people talking about it. One reason may be their Royalty Free license has more options than most and the image price can vary quite a bit based on the options (which seem confusing and easier to find images elsewhere without the confusion). But the images are great, with lots of unique photography for topics not found on other sites.

Raster/Photo images: Yes
Vector images: Yes
Video: No
Audio: No
Pay Per Image: Yes – approx. $3 for standard PPT use (small, 800px, level 2 RF)
Subscription Download: Yes (eg. 25 images per day for 6 months = $1,250)

Test Search Results:
1. “Fast Car” = 12,918 results
2. “Medical Consultation” = 1,150 results

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:37:50-07:00September 27th, 2009|Resource/Misc|

JupiterUnlimited – Lots of Getty Images in 1 Package

JupiterImages Unlimited is a Getty Images company – a central service that gives access to images from several Getty companies. The mid-level “Essentials” subscription shows images from photos.com, ablestock.com, liquidlibrary and photobjects.net. I spent a few months using this site for a project through a clients’ subscription. The images are great, quality top notch and selection wide. Doing a vector search brings up lots of great vector images, but also plenty that are dated and lackluster. Another highlight is the huge library of photo object images (photos shot on a white background).

Raster/Photo images: Yes
Vector images: Yes
Video: No
Audio: No
Pay Per Image: No
Subscription Download: Yes (eg. 1 year unlimied download Essential Plan = $1,500)

Test Search Results:
1. “Fast Car” = 4,077 results
2. “Medical Consultation” = 1,518 results

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:38:19-07:00September 26th, 2009|Resource/Misc|

Stock.Xchng A Free Option!

“Stock Exchange” (Stock.XCHNG) bills itself as the leading FREE stock photo site- and I would have to agree. This is definitely one of my go-to resources as the quality is good, image size is great (near fullsize print quality) and it is a true image site, though the search can give limited results. It does have ties with pay sites, so note the 1st row of images on each page is not part of the free options (and that’s why they look perfect). Another consideration is everything is a .jpg image, even the vector looking images (because the vector version is available at the affiliated pay site).

Raster/Photo images: Yes
Vector images: No
Video: No
Audio: No
Pay Per Image: No – They are all free!
Subscription Download: No

Test Search Results:
1. “Fast Car” = 262 results
2. “Medical Consultation” = 0 results
* With alternate search terms I was able to located 100’s of images for each, just took more effort.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:38:59-07:00September 25th, 2009|Resource/Misc|

iStockPhoto – Independent Artists for Variety

iStockPhoto can take credit for revolutionizing royalty free images. They permit anyone to upload images (vs. contracted artists/photographers) and the artist receives a royalty whenever the image is purchased (vs. paying upfront fees to the contracted artists). The good is unbelievable variety, often outside the expected and norm (independent artists). The bad is anyone can add images, so not everything is professional and polished…

Raster/Photo images: Yes
Vector images: Yes
Video: Yes
Audio: Yes
Pay Per Image: Yes (average for “Medium” image $9 each)
Subscription Download: Sort Of

Test Search Results:
1. “Fast Car” = 11,605 results
2. “Medical Consultation” = 18,889 reults

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:39:24-07:00September 24th, 2009|Resource/Misc|

Shutterstock Photos – Lots of images, including vector!

Shutterstock Photos is one of the sites I have been using a lot lately. They offer a huge selection of images, all professional quaility, though some a bit dated and a great selection. One option I have made really good use of is the number and diversity of vector art, especially for developing template background images.

Raster/Photo images: Yes
Vector images: Yes
Video: Yes (optional with subscription)
Audio: No
Pay Per Image: Yes average $10 each)
Subscription Download: Yes (25 images per day for 1, 3, 6, 12 month durations)

Test Search Results:
1. “Fast Car” = 17,206 results
2. “Medical Consultation” = 3,696 results

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:39:52-07:00September 23rd, 2009|Resource/Misc|

Images for Presentations

We have been told ‘An image is worth a thousand words.‘
Maybe it really is ‘A 1,000 words on a slide is boring!‘

I use images a lot. They can be to accent text, or be the entire slide. Back in ancient history (10-20 years ago), we did lots and lots print design and spent lots and lots of money on royalty free images on photo CDs. If you don’t remember those days, it averaged $300-500 for a disk with 20-40 images based on a theme. A disk was usually purchased for 1 or 2 images and we hoped to be able to use other images on future projects.

Today we have a huge number of online, royalty free image sites – plus flicker, google images and even Microsoft Online. It’s does not cost much to design highly visual layouts now. So I spent a week and pulled together some information on the image sites I like and use on a regular basis. I made some notes about likes and dislikes and did the exact same image search at all to compare the results.

For the balance of September I will list a different image resource with each post, hopefully you can discover a few new ones.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:40:22-07:00September 21st, 2009|Resource/Misc|
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