Fotolia has released a major update to their website which offers improved navigation and usability.
Among the new features customers may limit their searches based on what they can afford to pay. There are three basic categories: images where the XS (extra small) file costs only 1 credit, images where the XS file costs 2 credits or less, and all the images in the collection. These base prices set the pattern for ever higher prices for larger file sizes within each grouping.
Fotolia currently has 14,267,035 images on its site. 1,574,488 of those have been keyworded “people.” Of the people images the extra small file of 1,324,573 can be purchased for 1 credit. There are 128,897 people images that require 2 credits to purchase an XS file and 121,018 people images where the smallest file size available is 3 credits or more. The higher priced images include those in the Infinite collection which can be priced as high as 20 credits for the smallest file size available. Illustrations and Vectors may be priced even higher.
Keyword Launch System
The company has introduced a keyword launch system that helps customers quickly narrow their searches. For example if the customer searches for “business+people” she will get 340,072 returns. But she can also see a list of 11 descriptive and 11 conceptual sub-categories that these images fall into. Beside each sub-category name is the number of images in that category. Clicking on any of these sub-categories reveals additional sub-sub-categories. Thus, by clicking on People which has 273,000 images that are also related to business, and then clicking on “On Location” as opposed to “In Studio” the search is narrowed to 86,012 returns.
At that point 17 additional sub-categories are revealed. If the customer then picks “Construction/Plant” she narrows the search to 2,590 images, and if she further picks the concept “Emotions and Feelings” and the search is narrowed to 33 images. All this is accomplished by clicking on words. No more typing is needed after entering the first broad category of “business+people”.
However, if instead of “Construction/Plant” if she had picked “Church/Place of Worship” at that same level the number of hits would have dropped from 86,012 to 31 images. It is important to note that if she had started with just “Church/Place of Worship” there are 3,422 images in the file because the other qualifiers of business and people were not used.
Other Features
The new dashboard is a central control panel, which offers buyers and contributors unique interfaces. Buyers see information about credits, subscriptions and purchases, while contributors see their portfolio statistics and sales.
There is also a ‘recency’ filter that shows only those images that have been uploaded within a range of times from the current date.
These extended search functions are expected to improve efficiency and workflow of image research significantly. Take a look here:
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