Wahoo – free images from Getty! Sounds awesome doesn’t it? If you missed it, Getty now offers no-cost images from part of their large collection for noncommercial purposes. The question is, is this really a good deal?
Prepare for Some Hoop Jumping
After reading a few articles on the topic, I have to agree with some of the feedback. Here are some points of consideration.
- You can’t use their images for commercial usage. If you are a business – this deal doesn’t apply, you have to pay and yes Getty will know thanks to their embedded code.
- Getty’s logo is right below the image along with Twitter and FaceBook icons and the option to embed. That is a bit noisy visually speaking.
- You can’t use them as a featured image for your blog post.
- It isn’t mobile friendly. The image won’t resize down for mobile users. Okay, all of you who never use your phone to see a website raise your hands. Anyone?
- Image embedding requires html drop-in code instead of just a plain old image uploaded and inserted via your media library (for WordPress users).
- The html drop-in code uses iframes. Getty has a plugin to get around the iframes issue. So if you don’t mind installing another plugin there is that option.
Overall, you give up quite a bit using their method. You can’t use them for featured images for your blog posts, the image comes with a Getty ad, it’s unfriendly for mobile users, and most likely will need the WordPress plugin if you are a Visual Tab user. Talk about jumping through hoops!
Give It A Pass
My advice, just get nice photos from a nifty place like BigStockPhoto or Unsplash (which is free), many of them are just a dollar for royalty free images. Advertising on a Getty image looks unprofessional and you want to keep the attention on your business, not on Getty.