Stock photography is a really crowded industry. There are a bunch of stock photography agencies out there. From old players like Shutterstock to the newer players like Adobe Stock, which just entered the industry in 2015. Not to mention free image providers like Pixabay and Unsplash which gained more attention nowadays. As a user, it’s a bit challenging to find a unique image to be used on a project. Often time, we spot the same image on different projects. If you really need a unique image for your project, try to find one on Focused Collection.

What is Focused Collection?

Focused Collection is a, well, stock photo agency. Just like other stock photo agencies you might have known, Focused Collection also provides photos and other types of images for your creative projects. However, this platform is trying to offer something different. It is a place where you can find unique photos. All collections on this platform are hand-picked by selected artists. This platform doesn’t accept photo submissions from regular contributors like other agencies, say Shutterstock and Adobe Stock, so the chance of having the same photos can be minimized because the photos available on Focused Collection are not necessarily available on other platforms.

Also, the collections offered by Focused Collection — photos in particular — already have a clear concept, allowing you to find the right images more quickly.

What makes Focused Collection different?

Before answering the question, there is an additional information you need to know first. Focused Collection is a project from Depositphotos, partnering with other agencies, including 500px, Image Source, and StockFood. Depositphotos itself is a stock photo agency which has been around since 2009. At the time of writing, it already has about 60 million collections, ranging from photos, footage, and vectors. Imagine if you have to choose a single image out million images. It should be very-time consuming.

Depositphotos and its partners are trying to help you overcoming the problem by hand-picking high quality as well as original images through Focused Collection. According to a post on its official blog, Focused Collection has only about 400,000 image collections. They are gathered into 30 different categories, making it even easier for you to find the photos you need.

On the front page of its website, you will see three collections whereby each collection consists of hand-picked conceptual photos. One of the most appeal collections is the “Creative teens” which gathers photos of teenagers with a wide range of expressions.

Every single photo on Focused Collection really has a clear concept and well-taken. Take a look at the example below (photo URL).

Without any long explanation, it is easy enough to understand the intention of the photo above. The expressions of the models on the photo above also look natural enough. After digging deeper over the website of Focused Collection, you will find that most photos on this platform contain human constituent.

Regarding the uniqueness of the photo, Focused Collection is also reliable enough. Well, there is no guarantee that the photo you downloaded will be 100% unique and hasn’t been used by anyone before. At least, your chance of getting a unique photo is bigger compared to other stock photo agencies. If you really need a unique photo, Focused Collection offers personal image selection services. The team from Focused Collection will select the best, unique images according to your brief.

How to figure out if a photo is unique?

It’s a complex job to figure out if a photo hasn’t been used by anyone before, especially if the photo is used on non-digital projects. You can make use of Google Image to figure out if a photo has been used before. Upload a photo to Google Image and Google will search web pages based on the photo you uploaded instead of text. We’ve found the photo below from Adobe Stock.

According to the search results of Google Image, the photo above has been used for an event poster on Eventbrite and a material promotion of a health product on Amazon.

You can use the same method to figure out if the photos on Focused Collection are really unique and haven’t been used by anyone before.

What about the price and license?

Images that are sold by Focused Collection are royalty-free. Meaning that you don’t need to pay the photographer to use the photo you have bought. Unlike Depositphotos which adopts subscription model, Focused Collection accepts one-time purchase. This method (one-time purchase) is suited if you are handling a certain project and your client requires you to use a unique image.

A single photo on Focused Collection is sold from $149 to $549, depending on the size and license. There are three image sizes offered by Focused Collection:

• S (1600 x 1067px, 72dpi)
• L (2600 x 1733px, 300dpi)
• XL (5018 x 3345px or higher, 300dpi)

The S and L sized images are sold with Standard license while XL sized images are sold with Extended license. Some images are labelled with “Editorial Use Only”. Images with this label can’t be used for commercial use or advertising. They can only be used for informative purposes like blog posts, articles on printed magazines, reference books, articles in encyclopedias and so on. You can visit the License Agreement page of Focused Collection to learn more about the license.

If you are looking for a photo for commercial use, you can exclude the “Editorial Use Only” images on the search feature. Speaking for search feature, the search feature of Focused Collection allows you to search images based on color.

The verdict

Amount is something that the vast majority of stock photo agencies want to highlight. If the purpose is to show off how big the company is, it might works. However, some users might don’t’ really care about the company they get the images from, as long they get the right images for their projects. Large amount might gives you more options. However, it can also be a problem because you have to spend more time in selecting the best images for your projects.

The concept offered by Focused Collection is interesting enough. Instead of offering tens of million images, this stock photo agency offers fewer hand-picked images. The images are curated by experienced artists to keep the quality. The mission of Focused Collection itself is to help you cut off the time you spend to select the best images for your projects. The photos available on Focused Collection have a clear concept and are really ready to use.