Somewhere in your subscriptions there is probably a stock photography licence. Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, iStock, Getty, or one of the smaller ones. It renews annually, somebody approves the invoice without much thought, and it has been on the books for years.
It is worth re-examining, because the thing it was buying you has changed. Generated imagery now covers a decent share of what most businesses actually use stock photography for. Not all of it, and the exceptions matter more than the enthusiasts admit, but enough that the renewal is a genuine decision rather than a formality.
First, look at what you actually used
Before comparing anything, do the boring exercise. Pull up last year's licence cost, and then count how many images you genuinely used.
Most businesses are surprised here. Plans are sold on allowances of tens or hundreds of downloads a month, and a typical company uses a handful of images a quarter: a few for the website, one or two per blog post, some for social, an occasional brochure. If you are paying for a volume plan and using a fraction of it, the interesting comparison is not "generated versus stock" at all. It is "this plan versus a much smaller one".
Do that first. It sometimes settles the question on its own.
Where generated images genuinely do the job
There is a category of image that exists purely to fill a space attractively and set a mood. Nobody examines it. Nobody would notice if it changed. This is where generated imagery is now a straightforward replacement:
- Backgrounds and textures behind headings, banners and section breaks.
- Abstract and conceptual images. The one that means "data", or "growth", or "security". These have always been slightly ridiculous, and they are no more ridiculous when generated.
- Illustrations for blog posts and news items, where the picture is decoration rather than evidence.
- Social graphics, which are produced in volume, live for two days, and are the single biggest drain on a download allowance.
There is also one advantage that stock libraries structurally cannot match, and it is the most underrated part of this. A generated image can be made in your brand colours. With a library you take what exists and hope something in it roughly coordinates with your palette, which is why so many sites have a header image that nearly works. Generating it means the blues in the picture are your blues. Across a whole site that reads as a company that had things made for it, rather than one that went shopping.
Where it does not, and you should not try
This is the more important half, and we would rather be firm about it than sell you something that backfires.
Do not generate anything a customer could compare against reality:
- Your products. Obviously, if you sell physical goods. A picture that is nearly your product is worse than no picture, and in some cases it is a misdescription problem rather than a design one.
- Your premises, your vehicles, your equipment. People do turn up, and they do notice.
- Your staff. A team page of invented faces is a trust problem waiting to happen, and it is the sort of thing that gets screenshotted.
- Completed work, installations, and case studies. The whole point of that photograph is that it is real. Generating it is not a shortcut, it is a false claim.
The rule of thumb we use: if the image is doing evidence, photograph it. If it is doing atmosphere, generate it or licence it, whichever is cheaper.
The things that catch people out
Licensing and ownership. A stock licence is a known, boring, documented thing, and that is worth something. The position on generated images is less settled and varies between the tools, particularly on whether output can be owned outright or protected from others using something similar. Read the terms of whichever tool you use rather than assuming, keep a note of what was generated where, and treat anything that will appear on packaging or in print with more care than a blog header.
It still gets details wrong. Text inside an image, hands, logos, machinery, and anything with a repeating structure are all still unreliable. Look closely at every image before it goes anywhere public. We have had two out of four generated images come back with a visible flaw that passed every automated check we had, and only came out on inspection.
Generic is still generic. Cheap images at volume are exactly how stock photography ended up with its reputation, and generated imagery can arrive at the same destination faster. An image that visibly looks generated is worse than a decent stock photo. The saving is real, but it is not a licence to put a picture on everything.
How we approach it
We build image generation directly into the platform we run our clients' sites on, using Google's Imagen models, so a generated image is produced where the page is being edited rather than in a separate tool with its own login and its own bill. In practice the workflow that works is a mixed one: real photography for products, people and completed work, and generated imagery for the surrounding furniture, made to match the brand.
The models themselves change every few months, and anything specific we said about them here would be out of date by the time you read it. The commercial shape is the durable part, and it has not moved: a large share of routine imagery no longer needs a licence, and the images that genuinely sell your business still need a camera.
So, do you still need the subscription?
If your usage is low, quite possibly not. If it is high but concentrated in decorative and social imagery, probably not at the current tier. If you rely on genuine photography of real things, keep it, and consider whether the money is better spent on a photographer for a day.
What we would not do is cancel it on the strength of a good first week. Generate what you need for a month alongside the licence you already have, and compare the results honestly before the renewal date rather than after it.
If you want a second opinion on where your imagery budget is going, get in touch, or have a look at blu::clive, the part of our platform that handles this.