Earlier this month Shutterstock launched a free plugin that allows the users of its royalty-free image collection to find and edit watermarked images directly from within Adobe Photoshop. And if such images are later purchased, the edits are applied to the licensed content. This makes perfect sense, since it's already possible for Photoshop users to do exactly the same thing when working with images from the Adobe Stock collection. At the time, Jon Oringer, Founder and CEO of Shutterstock, described its 100 million images as being "the largest stock photography collection to ever integrate with the Adobe Photoshop application."
But that was then. Now stock content behemoth Getty Images has responded with its own plugin, which provides similiar functionality but taps users into its collection of no less than 140 million images and vectors. Not only that but the plugin works not just with Photoshop but also with Illustrator and InDesign (the Adobe plugin also supports these apps, as well as Premiere Pro and After Effects). In addition, Getty allows users to set their search preferences, which include such things as the number of people in a photograph, their ethnicity and age, nine types of image style parameters and, for editorial images, additional criteria such as the names of people in the image or the event they were attending. Users can customize their experience through download settings options that include being able to choose the size and location of a downloaded comp or licensed image, as well as the preferred action for layer placement (placing assets in individual layers, same layer or in a new document). It's also possible to use the plugin to work with high-res comps before purchasing them and applying all edits.
Finally, users can save and organize images with the Boards tool. The idea here is that you can curate your favorite images and compare at a glance by saving them to a board, which offers multiple layout options. Those using the Getty Images iOS or Android app can also view and edit boards, with all changes made in the app, on the collection site or in the plugin reflected across all devices and platforms. Advantage, Getty.