G2

Valentino I.

Junior Designer

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

6/11/2020

"Shutterstock is an excellent choice for your stock photo needs."

4.5/5

What do you like best about Shutterstock?

Great variety of stock photos available along with a range of different formats and sizes. The ease of use with comps before you buy makes the experience all the more better. There's no question that designing with stock photos can be tough - you're working with grainy images that have big watermarks and it becomes impossible for the client to view your designs and give their honest opinion. With the non-watermarked comps and various sizes available, Shutterstock has streamlined the process of showing clients preliminary work. Now, I can get the feedback I need on a design because it will look true to the final product.

The options you have at your fingertips in regards to image choice is amazing. I have never had less than twenty pages of options for any search query and it helps tremendously that related images show up when I've made my choice. For presentations, it is extremely convenient to have multiple images in a series that relate to each other to keep consistency throughout. I have even ended up finding images by the same photographer that I can utilize for other projects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shutterstock?

There are not many issues that I have with the Shutterstock platform, though there are places that I think Shutterstock can improve in certainly. While there are a vast amount of options for any given search query, there are some instances where there can be a lot of "fluff" present in the search results. I'd love to have the option included where pictures can be recommended for a specific term. It might be a great idea to have members of the community rate certain photographs or even just photographers so new users or returning users can have a base idea of what content would be the highest quality to suit their needs.

In terms of orientation, this digital age has brought a variety of layouts for photographs to the forefront. I'd love to see options where you can filter by comps that would fit in a square format for example. This would be the way we could find images as quickly as possible. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Shutterstock:

Shutterstock is a great option for stock photography. Their database seems endless and the options are great for any of your design needs. If you've had an issue using watermarked comps in the past, I highly recommend working with Shutterstock and using their hi-res comps. Your clients will thank you and you will no longer have to agonize over the question "will those words be over the picture in the final product?" Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Shutterstock solving and how is that benefiting you?

For designers, the biggest issue can be getting a client onboard with an idea. Clients may not understand the work from a design perspective and anything that you can do to give them a design that looks as true to final as possible can really help sell the work. Having the ability to place a hi-res, fully sized comp in your designs without having to pay first really expands the creativity a designer can have when using stock photography. I have found myself giving multiple iterations of a piece of work utilizing the amount of photos at my disposal on numerous occasions.

Shutterstock's system works really well for other members of my team. While they don't have a subscription themselves, they can use the search function and send me id numbers for photos they'd like me to use or try out for a design I'm working on. Shutterstock has truly shortened the amount of time spent emailing ideas back and forth. We can get right into designing! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.