Cost and time
Free-looking stock is often a bounce. Stolen stock is a legal bill. Phone photos are usually the cheapest truth.
Stock is a vendor. A phone is in your pocket. A scrape is a lawsuit shape. Cipher will accept uploads. The cheapest honest path is usually the phone. The expensive honest path is a photographer or licensed stock that matches the trade.
Default to phone photos of the real work. Buy stock only with a license that covers the site, and only if it does not lie about the SKU. Do not steal. We are not a stock library.
Phone
$0 cash, time to shoot, matches the box. Best default for trades and shops.
Licensed stock
A real invoice. Check the stock site's public pricing and license. Still a trust risk if the room is not yours.
Stolen
Looks free. Can become the most expensive. Not legal advice. Photo-rights page.
Photographer
Separate cost page. Quote, not an average.
Generated images as stock
Do not pass them off as yesterday's tray. Honesty cost is refunds.
$12
Does not include stock credits or a camera.
Limits and caveats
Some trades need beauty. Then budget photos besides Pro. Do not hide that to win a $12 comparison.
If a sentence would require a competitor SKU we have not verified, or a statistic we did not measure, it does not belong here.
What to do after you read this
If this page answered the query, open Create with the nouns from your own business, not a slogan. If it did not, you are probably in the wrong cluster: go back to the blog hub or Cost and time. Do not spin a second URL for a synonym. One intent per page is the whole point of this library.
Tools that actually do this job
These are public pages. Use them when the job is this job. They are not a second product you have to buy.
Questions people actually ask
Is Unsplash really free for a shop?
Read their license. We will not summarize a license we do not control. Still may be the wrong room.
Can I mix phone and stock?
Hero of the real shop, stock of a texture maybe. Do not mix a stock cake with a real price for a different cake.
Does palette-from-brief include photos?
Colors, not a photo budget.
Overnight jobs add stock?
They should not steal. Brief your real photos.