Stock photos are a reality for those of us who don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on a professional photographer. But more often than not, someone else in your field will use a similar stock photo on their website. Everyone wants to be unique, so here are some great ways to turn make stock photos unique.
Turn your color photo into a black and white photo
Here is a color stock image some beautiful trees. It’s a great image, but it can also work equally well as a black and white photo. Most photo editing software programs offer some kind of color > black and white option. Black and white images are great if your website already has lots of color because it adds impact without distracting from the overall design.
Give your stock image a retro or vintage look
Here is a nice image of a couple of horses in the country. Since this image looks like it could have been taken 100 years ago, why not try aging it a bit with a sepia filter. Both photos still look great, but not everyone will think to enhance the image, so it makes it a little more unique for your site.
Crop stock photos
This picture of a man hiking offers a lot of possibilities, but the first thing that comes to my mind is to crop the image a little and make the focus more on the hiker than the scenery. You’ll find that cropping works for most images, especially when you need to change the focus of the photo.
Add a bold color filter to the stock image
Sometimes you need to do something drastic, or you need to make an image stand out while making unique to your own website. Adding a bold color filter will certainly accomplish this. Take a look at this image of two turkeys. I know what you are thinking – nice photo but look at those poor, boring turkeys. Why not sound off an alarm by adding a bold red filter? Using a color that is unique to your logo or company is a great way to make your images pop.
Susan Sullivan
Susan lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex area with her husband and children. She is an avid distance runner, environmentalist, part-time beekeeper, chicken farmer and amateur photographer.