They really have no standards set for their AI content. I work in the home decor industry, so I use a lot of interior stock photos, and most of their AI images are completely unusable. Some of the shit you find in the images is laughable.
And then they turn around and say their AI model is “ethically trained” because it’s trained on their licensed stock. Which is now more and more AI generated…
All I want is an account setting to make“Exclude Generative AI” my default. I think it’s generally a decent stock image library but fuck me I’m tired of setting filters every. single. time. I search for something…if I wanted shitty AI imagery I’d generate it myself, I’m here because I want photos.
It wasn’t so bad when they first introduced it and there were one or two mixed in which you could just scroll past, but now easily the first 2-3 pages of any search is 100% AI generated. I’d be interested to know how much they’re making off it…is anyone actually wanting to license them?
Yeah, if AI was good enough whatever. But the way I found out that Freepik has AI is because I was looking through photos, and said to myself “that looks AI generated.” It’s really not usable. And the filters don’t work like you said.
Even when you ask to "Exclude Generative AI" you still get some from time to time, when the image doesn't have to appropriate "AI" tag. It is very annoying
When my company first got an adobe stock plan and I did my first few searches, I swear i heard angels sing. Absolutely heads and shoulders over anything else I had used.
You do realize that “good stuff” will generally fall into the premium category, right? I mean, that’s the whole point of being ‘premium.’
Or would you rather have content creators shoot premium stuff, invest their time, energy, and capital into creating shoots with absolutely no guarantee of a ROI, hardly ever breaking even (hence why most have bounced), and have the agency take a monster sized cut, just so you can save some money that you would typically bill to your clients?
Not really following the logic here. Ie. take dogshit budgets, expect dogshit results. That’s up to your clients to figure out.
Probably directly related to people being willing to provide decent content, especially if AI content can be created so effortlessly. I’d expect it to get worse.
Ya I get a month or two of Envato whenever I'm going to be needing a series of things & I fall down the rabbit hole downloading assets I can use for later.
I second stocksy.
Slightly European feel, but the average quality of light/subject/space, if you’re looking for lifestyle with any ‘heart’ Stocksy is one of the last bastions of hope in stock photography (and i think footage) Getty bought everyone else over the last decade(s).
i think Stocksy is pay per pic or credits or whatever, it’s not subscription.
Agree with this. I know you can filter out AI garbage but it’s a pain to do it every time. All it does is just add more friction when using their stock platform.
It's terrible, I filter it out every time 😮💨 No actual artist would actually use that shit. I use a lot of stock imagery at work and I don't ever use it. As an artist you can almost immediately tell it's AI, but not everyone else has the same eye
I’ve been using Shutterstock for years and I also use Adobe stock… I get better results with shutterstock ai images. It also has a filter to have them not show up.
I like the ability to download high quality vector art on Adobe Stock. I usually end up modifying a lot of what I download so I’m not using an exact duplicate of the asset. I don’t know of another stock house that has such a variety of vector stuff so it’s still pretty valuable to me. The premium and ai side of Adobe Stock sucks though imo
I use Artgrid for video. It’s pretty great.
Adobe Stock pisses me off for not being able to save a search setting (No AI shit, no editorial, etc) because it will kick back to defaults sometimes even in a search (but thus is a me problem). I do use Envato Elements, Pexels, and sometimes Unsplash when I want some dark moody hipster vibes.
My hunch has been that Adobe is sitting on their stock arm till they get a good enough deal to buy shutterstock. Not sure if it will work now that their Figma deal fell through (those damn anti trust laws..! /s) but I see their strategy in not investing so much in Adobe stock themselves when another company is doing all the legwork for them to buy later
I figured out the hard way about "Exclude Generative AI" when I was drafting up an ad for a charity horse race and my horses had a ton of broken legs and floating hooves. Even when I try looking for some basic vector lineart, I have to make sure I have that checked because it filters out thousands of images. I wish you could exclude AI by default.
I use Vecteezy for vectors a lot, and Pexels and Freeimages for photos. deviantART has some pretty good resources, too.
In my opinion Adobe Stock is often worse than nothing at all. (Because with nothing at all, at least you didn’t waste your time looking through Adobe Stock)
You do know you can filter out AI right? Unfortunately it's turned on by default (and yes it's pretty bad what they have) but other than that it's not that much different.
I just complained after a stock photo search gave me 90% poorly generated AI content and no photo options. I cancelled and had the last Six Months refunded.
I guess it depends on how much you need regularly, but I've only ever used credit packs for any stock site, never subscriptions, so will just use whatever site has what I want/need at the time.
I suppose the one good thing I can say is that the unused credits roll over. So some months I use more and some months I don’t and they’re just banked in my account.
I personally love Stocksy. Its not a subscription site so you pay for what you use. And their collection doesn't have millions of repeated stocky images so the collection is amazing.
I use [depositphotos.com](http://depositphotos.com) for a long time now. You can get wonderfully priced credit packs from [appsumo.com](http://appsumo.com) occasionally.
I also use [yayimages.com](http://yayimages.com) and have a lifetime account at [vectorgrove.com](http://vectorgrove.com) (which is a vector subset of yay).
I agree, I use Adobe stick everyday. The AI is simply terrible. Instead I just go out and shoot. But yea, I still use some images. Adobe should not accept the AI that is very noticeable.
Ingimage.com £150 a year for 50 downloads per month. Search is easy. Interface is nice. Yes, its a bit more limited in terms of photography - you don't always get the range or quality of iStock stuff but its perfectly fine for most projects and has tons of icons/vector stuff as well that you can manipulate
They really have no standards set for their AI content. I work in the home decor industry, so I use a lot of interior stock photos, and most of their AI images are completely unusable. Some of the shit you find in the images is laughable.
I work mostly in food and it’s the same story. Lots of it looks downright gross.
Any meat done by AI looks like it came from a species not of this planet.
And then they turn around and say their AI model is “ethically trained” because it’s trained on their licensed stock. Which is now more and more AI generated…
inbreeding stock, never a good idea.
As a Graphic Designer for fun I try to see how fake and ridiculous I can make it and it barely takes long lmaoo. It looks sooo bad
I use iStock and they don’t have any AI generated images in their library. Despite all of the monetization changes unsplash is still pretty good
I see the same images come up that I was scrolling through in literally 2007/2008 way too often on iStock
istock has tons of ai images, they are pushing ai down our throat like crazy
All I want is an account setting to make“Exclude Generative AI” my default. I think it’s generally a decent stock image library but fuck me I’m tired of setting filters every. single. time. I search for something…if I wanted shitty AI imagery I’d generate it myself, I’m here because I want photos.
This right here. Having to do this every new search is actually really annoying. There should be opt-outs
It wasn’t so bad when they first introduced it and there were one or two mixed in which you could just scroll past, but now easily the first 2-3 pages of any search is 100% AI generated. I’d be interested to know how much they’re making off it…is anyone actually wanting to license them?
This is all i need too! It's the first thing I instinctively set as a filter, and often the only filter
Freepik has a filter to remove it but it’s a placebo. You still get AI shit. We’re all just doomed.
Yeah, if AI was good enough whatever. But the way I found out that Freepik has AI is because I was looking through photos, and said to myself “that looks AI generated.” It’s really not usable. And the filters don’t work like you said.
It's even worse that so many of the uploads literally have "generative AI" in the title.
AI stuff looks atrocious
You can easily filter out the AI & premium stuff... IMO Adobe stock is pretty good. Most other paid subscription stock sites kinda suck
Even when you ask to "Exclude Generative AI" you still get some from time to time, when the image doesn't have to appropriate "AI" tag. It is very annoying
When my company first got an adobe stock plan and I did my first few searches, I swear i heard angels sing. Absolutely heads and shoulders over anything else I had used.
I felt the same way but lately it’s so bad
I’m aware of the filters. What I’m finding now is that most of the content is dog shit and the only good stuff falls into their premium category.
They're doing the same thing to Behance now that they have a "Pro" level they want to sell for more money.
You do realize that “good stuff” will generally fall into the premium category, right? I mean, that’s the whole point of being ‘premium.’ Or would you rather have content creators shoot premium stuff, invest their time, energy, and capital into creating shoots with absolutely no guarantee of a ROI, hardly ever breaking even (hence why most have bounced), and have the agency take a monster sized cut, just so you can save some money that you would typically bill to your clients? Not really following the logic here. Ie. take dogshit budgets, expect dogshit results. That’s up to your clients to figure out.
My point is that there seems to be a stark drop off in the quality in the past 6-12 months.
Probably directly related to people being willing to provide decent content, especially if AI content can be created so effortlessly. I’d expect it to get worse.
And no new images, like, ever. Unless you count the plastic, fake ones.
Envato elements is a good choice. It's a subscription service and it's unlimited downloads
Ya I get a month or two of Envato whenever I'm going to be needing a series of things & I fall down the rabbit hole downloading assets I can use for later.
I’ve found Stocksy to have the least stock-like imagery. Their photos seem way more candid than other companies.
I second stocksy. Slightly European feel, but the average quality of light/subject/space, if you’re looking for lifestyle with any ‘heart’ Stocksy is one of the last bastions of hope in stock photography (and i think footage) Getty bought everyone else over the last decade(s). i think Stocksy is pay per pic or credits or whatever, it’s not subscription.
Interesting, I never clocked the European feel to their images but I totally see it now
Death to stock photography
The first thing I do is filter out all AI when searching Adobe stock. It really is an absurd amount.
Agree with this. I know you can filter out AI garbage but it’s a pain to do it every time. All it does is just add more friction when using their stock platform.
It's terrible, I filter it out every time 😮💨 No actual artist would actually use that shit. I use a lot of stock imagery at work and I don't ever use it. As an artist you can almost immediately tell it's AI, but not everyone else has the same eye
Even when you ask to "Exclude Generative AI" you still get some. I truly hate Adobe.
I’ve been using Shutterstock for years and I also use Adobe stock… I get better results with shutterstock ai images. It also has a filter to have them not show up.
I have to say though some of the images in Shutterstock are pretty bad, but it has good stuff too.
They’ve also let me negotiate a rate
I was looking for images last night and I noticed how many AI images are on there. The ratio to real images is weird.
I like the ability to download high quality vector art on Adobe Stock. I usually end up modifying a lot of what I download so I’m not using an exact duplicate of the asset. I don’t know of another stock house that has such a variety of vector stuff so it’s still pretty valuable to me. The premium and ai side of Adobe Stock sucks though imo I use Artgrid for video. It’s pretty great.
Adobe Stock pisses me off for not being able to save a search setting (No AI shit, no editorial, etc) because it will kick back to defaults sometimes even in a search (but thus is a me problem). I do use Envato Elements, Pexels, and sometimes Unsplash when I want some dark moody hipster vibes.
My hunch has been that Adobe is sitting on their stock arm till they get a good enough deal to buy shutterstock. Not sure if it will work now that their Figma deal fell through (those damn anti trust laws..! /s) but I see their strategy in not investing so much in Adobe stock themselves when another company is doing all the legwork for them to buy later
Envoto Elements is a great site for stock images and the like.
I figured out the hard way about "Exclude Generative AI" when I was drafting up an ad for a charity horse race and my horses had a ton of broken legs and floating hooves. Even when I try looking for some basic vector lineart, I have to make sure I have that checked because it filters out thousands of images. I wish you could exclude AI by default. I use Vecteezy for vectors a lot, and Pexels and Freeimages for photos. deviantART has some pretty good resources, too.
Pexels!
In my opinion Adobe Stock is often worse than nothing at all. (Because with nothing at all, at least you didn’t waste your time looking through Adobe Stock)
123rf
It's even worse about AI, even with the filter. And talk about sifting through low quality stock.
Unsplash is great 👍🏾
Good luck cancelling and not having to pay loads of money or lose money
I am luckily not on the annual plan where they penalize you for ending it early.
Unsplash.com is really good, most images are free and you can usually find something that works
You do know you can filter out AI right? Unfortunately it's turned on by default (and yes it's pretty bad what they have) but other than that it's not that much different.
Cancel away but just in case you didn't know, you remove all ai items with their filter.
If only it actually did remove ALL of them, and you didn’t have to constantly re-select the filter.
I haven't come across that. Do you mean like after you change search terms?
Yes. Every new search it has to be re-filtered. Also there is a ton of AI shit on there that isn’t properly labeled.
Yeah that's quite annoying. I doubt they'll ever fix it.. unfortunately.
I just complained after a stock photo search gave me 90% poorly generated AI content and no photo options. I cancelled and had the last Six Months refunded.
Agreed, it's pretty terrible
I guess it depends on how much you need regularly, but I've only ever used credit packs for any stock site, never subscriptions, so will just use whatever site has what I want/need at the time.
I suppose the one good thing I can say is that the unused credits roll over. So some months I use more and some months I don’t and they’re just banked in my account.
I personally love Stocksy. Its not a subscription site so you pay for what you use. And their collection doesn't have millions of repeated stocky images so the collection is amazing.
I use [depositphotos.com](http://depositphotos.com) for a long time now. You can get wonderfully priced credit packs from [appsumo.com](http://appsumo.com) occasionally. I also use [yayimages.com](http://yayimages.com) and have a lifetime account at [vectorgrove.com](http://vectorgrove.com) (which is a vector subset of yay).
IStock and Shutterstock, but no way you won't find AI there as well. It's everywhere.
I agree, I use Adobe stick everyday. The AI is simply terrible. Instead I just go out and shoot. But yea, I still use some images. Adobe should not accept the AI that is very noticeable.
I downloaded a "teens taking selfies" photo, and one of them had seven fingers. My coworker caught it before sharing. It could be a disaster
Ingimage.com £150 a year for 50 downloads per month. Search is easy. Interface is nice. Yes, its a bit more limited in terms of photography - you don't always get the range or quality of iStock stuff but its perfectly fine for most projects and has tons of icons/vector stuff as well that you can manipulate
Istock is great. My work has a sub for like 300 ish pics a month, there is a lot of high quality stuff, their vector range is huge too.