Become a contributor to Adobe Stock

Yesterday Adobe announced the public beta of the Adobe Stock Contributor website, a new platform where you can sell photos, illustrations, videos, and vector graphics directly to the world’s largest creative community. By contributing to Adobe Stock, you can showcase your work to millions of creatives right inside Creative Cloud apps. The platform is fully functional but still in beta, so feedback is welcome through the Adobe Stock Contributor forum.

One major new feature is auto-keywording, a time-saving feature that uses machine learning to automatically generate the first five keywords of each image you submit. It’ll be interesting to see if this technology can generate emotional keywords like “joy” that could help worthy content to stand out from the crowd.




Adobe has integrated Stock contributor submission directly within Creative Cloud applications, though it’s not required. During the beta phase, you’ll have the ability to upload images to Adobe Stock directly from Lightroom CC and Bridge CC, which were also just updated and released. Adobe plans to open submissions to more content types in additional CC applications soon.

There’s a 33% commission for photos and vector art, and a 35% commission for videos, “based on the price of the image.” A payout request via Paypal or Skrill is available when you have reach $50 (or Euros) in royalties (allow 7 days for payment). Check out Adobe Stock itself for info on the range of pricing.

You can visit the Adobe Stock HelpX page for general information. See also a tutorial on how to search, download, and license royalty-free video footage from Adobe Stock via the Creative Cloud Libraries panel inside Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC.

Here's an Adobe Stock Contributor Spotlight sharing one contributor's experience:

Video Copilot offers free stock elements

Video Copilot has a free download of 100MB of stock elements for Free Stock-Pack Appreciation Day:

"This random collection of 20 stock elements and textures range from a night at the Air Show, to a burning Fuse and some stunning Time-Lapse clouds. Not to mention a little payback! Well… actually, video clips of money from around the world."

Just a token, but it comes with less apprehension than those mysterious free stock DVDs everyone has been offering.

Update: Weynand Training shares notice of a 7-Day Free Trial to VideoBlocks.com, for download of 20 clips a day during with access to over 30,000 video clips, backgrounds, effects, etc.

And of course Artbeats has free clips, currently new weekly.

Stock elements and AE tutorials

Rampant Media Design Tools has several After Effects tutorial videos, some supporting the use of their new motion graphics stock elements collections in an effort similar to Artbeats and Digital Juice. Topics include mocha tracking for roto in AE and how to control focus in AE 3D space using a basic expression:

RampanTV Tutorial - Achieve A More Cinematic Look in AE from Rampant Media Design Tools on Vimeo.

Artbeats Lower Thirds?

Ninja Crayon has a funny take on the new Artbeats collection in Artbeats Lower Thirds?

This post has been expanded and update, see Free lower thirds and tutorials: Leverage Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects at PVC.

commonsExplorer: a browser for Flickr + more

commonsExplorer is an experimental interactive browser for the Flickr Commons, a collection of pictures with "no known copyright restrictions." It provides a "big picture" of these collections with a single screen interface that reveals structures and patterns and encourages exploration.

commonsExplorer is a Java executable, so Windows and Linux users will need to have Java installed. The application requires a network connection, and may not work from behind a firewall or proxy.

Creative Commons has had its own search function for awhile according to a post at Google Operating System, which has a nice cache of articles on new features in Google Image search, which can filter for usage rights under advanced search.

For video, see Free Online Stock Video Footage | 9 Of The Best Public Domain Video Resources from WebTV Wire (one dropped out); for audio see Videomaker's compilation of royalty free sound FX and Legal Music For Videos from Creative Commons.

Update: via @juanmiguelsalas comes 15 Best Places for Designers to Get Free Stock Photos Online by Six Revisions.

Update 2: see Royalty Free Music For YouTube Videos at Who Is Matt, and Openfootage.net.

Unplugged 19: Artbeats founder Phil Bates

Motionworks' Unplugged 19 features an interview with Artbeats founder Phil Bates:

"Artbeats founder Phil Bates shares how Artbeats began as a still image provider during the desktop publishing revolution of the 1990’s and has grown into arguably the most recognised stock footage provider in the world today."

Artbeats free clip daily

Artbeats is giving away a free clip every day to registered users of their website: "Each and every day, a unique and different clip will be chosen by Artbeats staff to be offered to you absolutely FREE."

12 free Crowd Control stock footage clips

All Bets Are Off Productions has posted 12 New FREE Crowd Control stock footage clips of pre-keyed actors (up to 1280 x 720 pixels).

8 Public Domain stock video resources

Videomaker noted Free Online Stock Video Footage | 9 Of The Best Public Domain Video Resources from WebTV Wire (one dropped out), and added their own compilation of free sound FX.

Also handy is the Google Image filter for usage rights under advanced search. Apparently though, Creative Commons has had its own search function for awhile according to a post at Google Operating System, which has a nice cache of articles on new features in Google Image search.

Yenaphe's free timelapse footage

In addition to unique posts on his blog, Sébastien Périer is adding a section for free Scripts & Stock Footage, and recently posted 2 free HD clips (clouds and melting ice) in a variety of formats.

Hi-Def San Francisco

This is sort of interesting, though really just a stock footage project:

"Hi-Def San Francisco is project of CloudView Photography. The camera is a 3 megapixel StartDot Technologies Netcam XLmounted in a weather proof enclosure high in the hills of Sausalito. Images are captured every 15 seconds cropped from the full resolution to 1920x1080 and uploaded in 480, 720 and 1080 resolution to the web server. Periodically the software (running on a FreeBSD server) creates a time lapse that collapses the prior 24 hours into 240 seconds of video."

Free Sound Effects

Partners In Rhyme has a good set of Free Sound Effects and links to many more. Samples can be copyright-free, with limitations, or royalty free so check the facts. See also www.ljudo.com and SampleNet. If you're in a bind use FindSounds to search the Web for lo-fi sounds. There's a ton more of free sounds available on the net, always needed by Flash artists, so Google away.

Update: DV Guru noted the freesound project which has teamed up with ccMixter to "share information about freesound's 20,000 samples and track remixes across the two sites. It's all part of the Creative Commons Sample Pool and therefore available to all remixers, safe, legal and sane."