The one good thing about buying your stock photos is that even if someone might see them on another site you at least know that they come from a photographer that wants to sell them and they aren’t random photos you grabbed off of google images.

This can be important if you are designing a business website and you need a few pictures as fillers.

In any event it is always difficult to get images of people and what is really strange some cities and monuments and other historic places that you might think are fine to use in your work are protected by copyright. Meaning if a random person takes a picture on vacation they can’t legally sell it without the permission and a payoff to a government permit office.

It can get really strange.

Anyway if you are looking to buy or even sell your images take a look at

www.StockPhotoSpot.com

Sites that offer video or image hosting often require membership.

If you want to store your files you need to signup and then uploading files means you need to login.

This is one of TinyPics best features. The files that you upload are anonymous and require no membership.

If you place images on their site you can link to them either directly for placement within your pages or you can use their site url to offer other options.

Videos are placed in a flv player that is branded but they are easy to embed within your site.

Recently they have started to offer other value added image processing options that can stylize and add interest to your images. These products are placed on your pages with a flash player.

So what are the drawbacks?

Once you upload a picture or video it is there for as long as tinypic hosts the file which is usually about a year. This means you can’t delete it but it also means they reserve the right to delete files when they see fit…. so don’t depend on TinyPic to host your primary website layout files.

Also Video files are comressed to reduce file size. This means that the quality of the video won’t match the original and it may not be as good as services provided by other websites. The best thing to do is give it a test and see if it lives up to your needs. More then likely it will.

TinyPic.com is a quick and easy way to get your files online and it is a resource that you should keep in your bag of tricks.

www.tinypic.com

Joining is free

You get a free subdomain URL with your account
like http://yourname.myphotoalbum.com

Add Unlimited Photos

There is NO LIMIT to the number of photos you can add to your MyPhotoAlbum account. We make it easy to upload directly into an existing album, or create a new one for any specific occasion or theme. All of the most prevalent photo formats are accepted: gif, .jpg, .png.

You can upload via your camera phone, Email or their easy upload tool

You can also upload your videos.

You get a free layout and album for your image collection

Personal web address
Create your own personal, memorable MyPhotoAlbum address at registration. This allows you to give personality to your MyPhotoAlbum gallery, and moreover provides a simple and unforgettable means for friends and family to easily visit your photos and videos in the future.

Best of all the service is free unless you decide to print off your images from their service.

http://www.myphotoalbum.com

If you are use to using Illustrator you will notice that some of the tools are different which will require another learning curve to forget your normal habits and adapt to new ways of doing things.

But this package does provide enough ways to draw controlled images with a variety of tools that it is definitely worth it.

The major drawback is export options at this time. If you are use to jumping between Illustrator and Photoshop or a desktop publishing package you will need to be able to use one of the 10 or so formats available to export your work.

Since PostScript is one of the options your images should still be able to be used however we have not pumped any files through a prepress processor to check how they will print.

The most important tools are all there.

You can draw freehand and bezier curved lines.

There are a few presets like drawing 3d box shapes or spirals … the developers must like spirals heh.

Rotation of objects can be done through a dialog box or by double clicking with the arrow select tool.

Blends and fills are available including directional fills.

There are a variety of ways to create clipping paths.

All in all this is a pretty nice tool that we are just getting use to playing with.

If it continues to perform as our first trials have shown then it will be a likely replacement for illustrator.

Inkscape is a project with a few years work behind it so you can depend that it will continue as long as a project of this type is needed.

We hope to do a few howtos with this software in the future and you should go download your own copy.

Linkscape is available for Windows, Mac and linux variants.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/

Welp that is what Blingee is all about … converting static images into GLITTER.

Honestly this is a pretty popular site with tons of users and a lot to offer for people that don’t have either the time or ability to make their images interesting.

Basically you make your own or grab someone elses creation and place it on your page.

If you are a 13yo girl into Hello Kitty Unicorns this place is defiantly for you.

On the other hand this is a product model that needed to be offered and one that can’t be overlooked.

Basically they are offering a free service that will create millions of potential visitors to their site along with watermark stamps on each image that announce their site every time an image is placed on a Myspace or other social network page. Free advertising is good.

Since they host the resulting image they aren’t giving away the overhead neaded to create them but it must place a pretty big load on their servers not to mention transfer costs.

Anyway check them out examine their offerings and try to think of a niche product that you can serve.

http://blingee.com

• no registration required
• commercial use is OK
• instant download
• option to purchase super high resolution files for use in print or graphic design
• optional member registration gives access to lightboxes and email-to-a-friend features

Share and sell your photos!

We invite amateur and professional photographers to submit photos for inclusion on the website. Photographers will have their own portfolio page to share their talents with our millions of visitors.

High resolution versions of all our photographers’ photos are available to buy. You set the price and we take a commission on any sales. The more photos you have on the site, and the better their quality, the more chance you have of earning some money.

The process is very simple you just visit the site and select an image to upload.

Add your message for your Tweet and then provide your username and password.

Really this is not such a great thing to allow another site access to a password and you should probably stay away from such things.

There is no registration required and yfrog is part of imageshack so you can expect that the service is reputable….

However use it at your own risk we have no idea if they are caching your info or storing it.

Developers using Yfrog’s APIs can benefit from:

• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support, enabling more security for third-party applications.
• iPhone optimized images via API, enabling faster downloads for IPhone users.
• Ads-free iPhone media player
• Fast and free one-click media hosting through Yfrog.

for more information visit

www.yfrog.com