But those days could be over thanks to a clever new tool from 500px‘s labs. The development arm of the photo sharing and stock photography service has just debuted its new Splash tool in beta form, and it gives you a simple canvas on which to paint an approximation of the image you’re after.

The tool then searches 500px’s content for imagery that fits the bill as closely as possible, paying attention both to the color palette you’ve chosen, and to the overall composition of your creation.

Your drawing can be as simple or detailed as you like, within reason. You can control your brush size and color, and the gallery of suggested images will be updated after each and every brush stroke, allowing you to refine the results by continuing to add more detail.

But even with as little as just a handful of strokes, you can already get surprisingly relevant content — and it’s even sorted into five different categories to make it easier to drill down to the photo you’re looking for.

For example, we tried just a quick stroke of green at the left of the canvas, and a broader stroke of red occupying the remainder. These two strokes were enough to find us a detail shot of a green tree next to one in fall colors under the landscapes category, a left-facing chicken against a green background under the animals category, and a couple of images of adjacent green and red buildings, among many other images which also corresponded to our selected color palette and (to a lesser degree) composition.

It’s not going to be a tool that will have utility for everyone, but if you frequently rely on having to choose images to match a color palette — or you’re just too visual to find your stock photos with a verbal search — then the Splash tool looks to offer a great alternative!

(via FStoppers)

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Yahoo-owned photo sharing service Flickr has just followed in the footsteps of rivals such as 500px, announcing that it is getting into the stock photo business. If you’re a Flickr user, though, you may find the program rather opaque.

For one thing, it’s apparently not open to all Flickr members. Doubtless looking to save its licensees the hassle of sorting the wheat from the chaff, Yahoo is limiting access to the program to certain hand-selected photographers. That’s perhaps understandable, as filtering through a million cat photos and snapshots of endless meals to find something more fitting of a glossy magazine would be a thankless task that might persuade potential licensees to stick with more tightly-curated stock libraries. Still, it means that you can’t take part unless you can first persuade Yahoo that you’re worthy.

That’s bound to be a disappointment to some Flickr members who’ve been hoping to consolidate their licensing and photo sharing in one place. Perhaps a bigger issue, though, is that the company provides almost no information about what the program you’re considering signing up for is all about.

Sure, there’s a little feel-good talk about how Yahoo’s “curatorial team will provide assistance, outreach and connectivity to help you get your photos licensed”, and perhaps even “try to connect you with original photo assignments”. But the really important details — on what terms your photos can be licensed, how much licensees will be paying, and what cut will go to you — is conspicuous by its absence. Apparently if you want to find out, you’ll first have to get yourself an offer to join the program.

Be that as it may, the program is open for applications now — and if your photos are particularly popular, there’s even a chance Yahoo will be reaching out to suggest you join the program, rather than your having to make the introduction. If you’re a Flickr member, it’s probably worth a try, if only to find out whether the company’s as-yet-unknown terms are something you can live with.

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As the marketing strategies and priorities of businesses evolve from year to year, so too does the demand for stock photos in the supporting arena of business imagery. Enter Getty Images’ iStock to provide us with their predictions of the stock needs in 2014 and beyond… certainly worthwhile knowledge for the conscientious social observer and stock photographer alike!

Curious about the key trends to look out for? In a few words, the experts at iStock predict an expanding market for images of involved fathers, powerful women and hipsters sitting at authentic wooden desks sipping real coffee in their home offices, all with the themes of transparency, openness, and innovation in the 21st century.

As a bit of a Friday diversion, we’ve tried to find images that represent as many elements of this brave ‘new’ world as possible. Below are our best attempts:

This woman is in power and her choice of meeting venue conveys transparency and openness: two trends iStock highlighted.

This dad is ‘On Deck’ while working from home. While we’re hitting two trends here, the quality of his parental involvement seems fairly low.

This bearded hipster is a creative leader in a service-oriented profession. We’ll call that three!

While she doesn’t really count as a hipster, she’s riding a fixie bike in an open, glass office. We’ll counts this as hitting a solid one-and-a-half iStock trends.

No hipster, but we do have a wooden desk, real coffee and monochrome clothing.

Any favorite stock photo images? Think you can find more trends captured in one image? Let us know in the comments!

via PetaPixel and Stock Photo Secrets

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