As part of this, I have made it one of my focuses to help content creators find good, legal content to use on their sites. So much so that I made it the focus of my talk at WordCamp Dallas 2009.

One of the recommendations I have repeatedly made was the use of Stock.xchng for free stock images. I continued with this recommendation even after Getty purchased Stock.xchng, even though the purchase made me uneasy.

Though I still think Stock.xchng is a great site for its purpose, it no longer is my favorite tool or my first recommendation. Instead, I’m not now putting my focus on Morguefile, a free stock photo site that is simply a better alternative for most bloggers and other content creators.

Specifically, there are three reasons why I made this choice:

1. Better Licensing: The licensing on Stock.xchng is not longer consistent and many photographers demand additional steps be taken before using an image. While this is their right, the lack of consistent licensing makes it much more difficult to find images. This was a problem I talked about in March and Morguefile’s one license just works better.
2. More Tools: Morguefile makes it possible to resize and crop images on the site, making it faster to get images in the size/format needed.
3. Better Search: Though I really can’t pinpoint the reason for this, the search in Morguefile seems to work better for me. Despite the fact it has a smaller library than Stock.xchng, I seem to get more usable and relevant results with each search.

This is not to say that Morguefile is perfect. It does have a smaller library than Stock.xchng, about 250,000 images to their 400,000 (Morguefile numbers based on not filtering image results) and the ads can be a bit aggressive at times, even though I find them less annoying than the deceptive “premium listings” on Stock.xchng.

For me, Morguefile is now my default stock image site and Stock.xchng will be the backup. It will also be my default recommendation.

That being said, everyone should use what works best for them, but I think Morguefile is the one that will best suit most people I work with.

My only regret is not starting sooner and not taking a closer look at Morguefile after receiving several recommendations to try it. To those of you who did suggest it previously, I apologize for my stubbornness.

I won’t be so daft about recommendations in the future.

On that front, I want to open the door to anyone with recommendations for services to license or find content to use. I’ve covered many here but I know there are others I’m not aware of so, if you have one in mind, please feel free to drop me a line below.

In an newsletter sent to its members, stock.XCHNG, better known as either “SXC” or its domain, sxc.hu, announced that it had been purchased by Getty Images, one of the largest stock photography agencies. This is the latest in a long string of purchases for Getty Images, which has included budget stock photo site iStockPhoto and more recently Jupiter Images.

Stock.XCHNG is best known as one of the world’s largest and most popular free stock photo libraries, with over 400,000 images that are free for download and use (with some licensing restrictions in some cases). According to the announcement, this will not change. However, stock.XCHNG will be offering users the chance to purchase photos from Getty’s iStockPhoto service on the stock.XCHNG site.

However, not everyone is happy about this purchase. I was alerted to the buyout by users of stock.XCHNG that fear both a change to the site, especially over the long term, and Getty’s notoriously aggressive copyright enforcement.

Getty, which routinely sends out invoice demands to alleged infringers, has earned a reputation for being extremely zealous in its enforcement and that has made some uncomfortable using even legally licensed Getty photos on their sites. This has also sparked a backlash from those affected and at least one lawyer has offered assistance with Getty cases at a fraction of their normal rate.

Stock.XCHNG is a site that I’ve used repeatedly on PT, recommended highly on the site, in presentations and in private to friends. Though it seems highly unlikely that Getty would expand its litigation tactics to stock.XCHNG images, which were freely licensed to begin with, almost immediately after the announcement I received several emails asking about alternatives.

Though, to be clear, I don’t think that anyone who has used or uses stock.XCHNG images on their site will be at any risk not only is the use completely legal (so long as the restrictions are followed), but it doesn’t appear, looking at the terms of use, that Getty would have the ability to take such action. Stock.XCHNG is a non-exclusive where Getty, on its own site, owns all of the rights to the images it sells.

Still, if anyone wishes to consider an alternative. I highly recommend PhotoDropper for WordPress for those who use that platform. For those who don’t, CC-licensed images are probably still a very good way to go for free, legal images to use on your site.

In the end, I will likely continue to use stock.XCHNG, though my uses will continue to be very limited. I already favor capturing my own images, usually via screenshots, and PhotoDropper to stock.XCHNG due to sizing and licensing issues.

However, I, along with other users, will have to monitor this and see if and how the site does change over the long term.