Getty Images has launched an
Adobe Photoshop plugin that allows user to find images in the Getty collection and then edit watermarked images in Photoshop. If any image found and manipulated in this manner is later purchased, the edits will be applied to the licensed content.
This gives Photoshop users the same functionality as they have had when using
Adobe Stock since
Adobe launched its collection in June 2015.
Shutterstock launched its own
Photoshop Plugin earlier this month.
One of Adobe Stock’s big advantages over other stock photo collections has been that once a graphic designer finds a potentially useful image that image can, with one click, be downloaded to the desktop, a specific library, or opened in any Adobe app of the designer’s choice.
Now the playing field has been somewhat leveled in terms of ease of workflow between major competitors. It may now come down to who has the best image at the right price.
Getty’s plugin works not only with Photoshop but also with Illustrator and InDesign (the Adobe plugin also supports these apps, as well as Premiere Pro and After Effects). In addition, Getty allows users to set their search preferences, which include such things as the number of people in a photograph, their ethnicity and age, nine types of image style parameters and, for editorial images, additional criteria such as the names of people in the image or the event they were attending.
Users can customize their experience through download settings options that include being able to choose the size and location of a downloaded comp or licensed image, as well as the preferred action for layer placement (placing assets in individual layers, same layer or in a new document). It's also possible to use the plugin to work with high-res comps before purchasing them and applying all edits.
Finally, users can save and organize images with the Boards tool. The idea here is that you can curate your favorite images and compare at a glance by saving them to a board, which offers multiple layout options. Those using the Getty Images iOS or Android app can also view and edit boards, with all changes made in the app, on the collection site or in the plugin reflected across all devices and platforms.
Getty claims that it has 140 million images and vectors, but a huge percentage of that number are editorial images. In its Creative collection it has 17,144,908 as of today. So far, iStock does not seem to have offered the same Photoshop plugin, but since everyone else is doing it one would expect that iStock will not be far behind.
Shutterstock has over 100 million images and Alamy (who has not offered such a plugin to date) over 90 million. It is unclear how many images AdobeStock has, but I believe it is somewhere around 60 million.
In the chart below, I have searched the various collections for 22 concept keywords to provide some comparison of collection sizes. In all cases I have just searched for photos and not included illustrations, vectors of footage. It should be noted that in Getty’s case I have only included the “Creative” collection and not included “Editorial.” Consequently, the numbers for News, Sports, Entertainment and Editorial reflect only those images in the Creative collection that have these keywords.
Also the totals are not at all accurate because many of the images in the collections will contain several of these keywords – an office or sports image with people for example. The Getty images may be more extensively keyworded than some of the images in the other collections. It is interesting that the Getty collection of 17 million images has almost the same number of images with the keyword “People” and the AdobeStock collection with almost 4 times as many images in its collection.
| |
Shutterstock |
iStock |
AdobeStock |
Alamy |
Getty Images |
| |
Photos |
Photos |
Photos |
Photos |
Creative Photos |
| People |
13,782,346 |
11,661,737 |
6,898,061 |
9,699,979 |
6,827,627 |
| Travel |
7,014,323 |
10,420,961 |
3,997,018 |
7,773,441 |
3,523,208 |
| Nature |
19,894,243 |
10,522,268 |
9,050,817 |
6,746,021 |
3,725,804 |
| News |
189,003 |
316,829 |
112,441 |
6,046,705 |
89,162 |
| Architecture |
4,760,194 |
2,755,663 |
2,738,140 |
4,674,514 |
1,972,991 |
| Food |
10,766,087 |
7,503,219 |
7,684,217 |
3,801,584 |
1,367,022 |
| Business |
6,221,909 |
3,110,890 |
7,872,883 |
2,740,409 |
1,008,231 |
| Entertainment |
1,661,852 |
1,380,562 |
429,947 |
1,743,821 |
365,780 |
| Wildlife |
1,695,342 |
1,285,799 |
821,384 |
1,659,388 |
1,067,728 |
| Sports |
2,787,366 |
2,003,913 |
1,682,300 |
1,599,484 |
793,041 |
| Office |
2,732,254 |
859,276 |
2,548,108 |
1,367,785 |
398,285 |
| Children |
2,625,692 |
1,851,690 |
2,347,604 |
1,254,386 |
1,287,151 |
| Industry |
2,291,873 |
2,133,660 |
1,622,404 |
1,141,243 |
402,209 |
| Agriculture |
2,419,327 |
1,466,837 |
1,496,109 |
1,031,909 |
350,045 |
| Recreation |
1,269,767 |
2,410,523 |
962,166 |
924,495 |
1,872,596 |
| Computer |
1,619,632 |
911,921 |
2,297,429 |
814,672 |
386,218 |
| Landscapes |
5,924,729 |
2,885,877 |
3,518,764 |
594,694 |
1,347,707 |
| Medical |
1,150,782 |
1,515,330 |
607,268 |
551,728 |
349,750 |
| Scenics |
2,300,513 |
2,444,495 |
1,199,577 |
499,126 |
1,558,475 |
| Editorial |
683,384 |
293,826 |
22,912 |
428,598 |
3,604 |
| Science |
647,579 |
577,823 |
388,796 |
389,557 |
267,826 |
| Babies |
1,247,572 |
418,093 |
973,500 |
131,257 |
206,636 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
93,685,769 |
68,731,192 |
59,271,845 |
55,614,796 |
29,171,096 |