iStock Promo Code

iStockphoto Coupon Codes Updated for September 2023:

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Welcome to our collection of the best iStock promo codes! Adding stock photography to your website is one of the simplest and fastest ways to give your website a professional look and feel.

Plus, you will be supporting photographers and artists from around the world!

We are continually updating this page so that we have the most recent coupons and promo codes available.

To use these promo codes, click on the blue coupon button below to reveal the code. A new window will open up that will take you to iStockphoto.com. Order your products, and then when you reach the online shopping cart, paste the coupon code in the box.

How to Apply Your iStock Promo Code:

When you buy something from a website, we’ve discovered that they all tend to hide their ‘coupon code’ section in a different place. So we’ve created a handy guide to help make sure you don’t accidentally miss it when you’re buying something from iStockphoto:

• When you find the image you would like to purchase, click on the picture. Then select what size you would like to buy and then click “Download Photo”
  
• You have two options for purchasing: you can purchase individual credits, or you can purchase a subscription. Which is best for you? It depends on how many images you intend to download per month:

Now you’ve reached the Checkout page. This is where the coupon code entry field is. You can either create an account (if you don’t have one), or log in with your existing credentials.

Underneath the price total is the coupon entry field. It says ‘Have a Promo Code?’. Click that and then enter the promo code:

If you’re a new customer, then you need to enter your contact/payment information before you apply the promo code. This is to ensure that you’re a new customer.

For existing customers, you’ll need to login before the discount will apply to your order.

New Feature: Rollover Subscription Images!

iStock just announced that your unused image downloads (between 10-50 images per month depending on your plan) will rollover into the next month. That means if you’re unsure if you’re going to use the full allotted amount for your blog, you don’t have to worry about it and you can even stockpile your allotted images until your website needs a lot of them all at once!

iStock Update: Late last year iStock started making all file sizes are the same price! You can read more about it here.

New! One flat fee for all file sizes

Typically micro-stock companies have different price tiers for the different resolution sizes of their stock images, with smaller sizes being cheaper and larger sizes being more expensive. iStockphoto has done away with that and all file sizes are the same price now, so in my opinion you should always get the highest resolution size possible as you can always size it down as necessary using a graphics program.

If you don’t have much budget for software at your company then GIMP is an open source alternative to Photoshop, and has all the tools that would be necessary at the beginner level. If you need complex graphic work done then you are probably best to hire a professional graphic designer. Or if you don’t want to size down the images yourself you are allowed to re-download any image size at any time for images that you have purchased after the date when the new rules came into effect.

‘But I only need the smaller file sizes for the web?’ It might be true that you mainly use stock photography for your blog or website, but you never know when you might find yourself being featured in print media, making posters, signage, etc. in which case you will need high resolution files. You should especially make sure that you have high resolution versions of your logo or any images that are an important part of your branding or advertising.

For any images that you have purchased prior to the new rules, you can re-download different file sizes that are smaller or the same as the size that you originally purchased.

Their New Collections

Also launched recently are iStockPhoto’s new collections: Essentials and Signature.

The Essentials collection is exactly what it sounds like, stock photography for day to day content publishing on your blog or website. These images are less expensive and suited more to general business and blogging needs. The Signature Collection is their premium collection and has folded in the old Vetta Collection, all of those images are now available through the Signature Collection plus vectors and illustrations.

The Signature Collection image are more expensive, but they tend to feature images that are more creative, artistic, and often heavily edited which might be what you are looking for. These type of images are well suited to advertising.

iStockphoto’s WordPress Plugin:

iStock has developed a convenient WordPress plugin so that you can search for, purchase, and insert stock images from iStockphoto directly into your blog posts without having to leave the WordPress backend. A huge time saver!

The plugin is free to download and easy to use. Once you have the plugin installed and have verified your account information for iStockphoto you can then search their image database directly through the WordPress Media Library. You can download images that you have already purchased or you can buy new ones and use them right away.

There is also a built-in photo editor so you can crop, add text, resize, add filters, stickers, or frames, or use the touch up tools to edit the image. The photo editor stores a copy of the original photo and the edited one, so the original is not lost.

Again this is all done within the WordPress backend so you don’t have to spend time flipping back and forth between WordPress and your image editor. This plugin also automatically adds copyright captions for you.

About iStock:

iStockphoto started out as ‘iStock’, and was one of the first ‘microstock’ photography sites to exist.
Dating back to the year 2000, iStock bypasses traditional stock photo agencies and instead provides a marketplace for photographers to sell their images directly to the people who want to use them. The ‘microstock’ movement is mostly centered on the internet, where multitudes of websites and blogs will use stock photography in their articles.

Before the internet was widely used stock photography was sold via CD-ROMS, and you had to purchase entire image packages even if you only wanted to use one or two. People can also use these websites in advertisements that they create.

Initially iStock actually gave away their images for free, and also allowed photographers to upload their images to the database. It was a radical concept at the time, and it took off like wildfire. Their bandwidth usage bills quickly climbed to $10,000 a month so they asked if their users would be willing to pay for the service, the response was a resounding yes. Thus the ‘microstock’ business model was born, and in the years since then many other microstock companies have cropped up.

iStockPhoto is actually a Canadian company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta.

Professional Tools from iStock for Creative Professionals:

iStock’s Adobe Plugin – Do you work with Adobe Creative Cloud? iStock has created a plugin that enables you to search the entire iStock website without having to leave Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign. If you’ve worked with these tools, you know how annoying it can be to open up a browser, search for images, download them, then go back to Photoshop and upload the images. This is a great tool to help your workflow. There’s both a Mac and a PC version of the plugin.

iStockphoto App – This is iStock’s official app for both the iPhone and iPad.

Ways to Follow iStock Around the Web:

Twitter – Want to fill your Twitter feed with beautiful images? iStockphoto by Getty Images has over 127,000 followers and their feed is full of new and interesting photos from select photographers.

Facebook – Prefer Facebook? You can follow them here and be the first to learn about new features/promotions on the site.

Youtube – iStockphoto has a fantastic youtube channel where you can learn all about how to create stock photos and use them yourself. If you unsure about how to mark your photos before uploading them to iStock’s website, you can learn a lot here. We’ll post one of their tutorial videos here for you:

Instagram – iStock and Instagram were meant to be together. Follow them for beautiful photos in your feed each day.

Linkedin – Want to work for iStock? Connect with them on Linkedin here.