Digital Art and the Evolution of Stock Photography

Art speaks louder than words. It employs known visual objects and transforms them into surprising new forms. When it comes to digital art, can stock photography be of use? Can it keep up with the rapid pace of digital art transformation?

We’ve asked digital artists who participated in Digital Decade 2016 one simple question:

How should stock photography evolve in order to serve digital art in the future?

Moe Pike Soe on virtual reality:

I believe the next step for digital art would be VR/360°. It would be interesting to see how stock photography’s going to help artists like me contribute to the new medium.

Min Htet Dipar on the community of artists:

Stock photography has already played an important role in the world of digital art and visual communications. In order to be more useful, there should be a community that connects photographers and artists and shares their mutual perspective. Believe me, every digital artist has a hard time trying to find the right photo. Depositphotos: keep doing what you are doing.

Eugene Soloviev on artwork examples:

The price and atmosphere of a photo are among the most important factors. Sometimes it’s hard to find truly authentic photos, especially when it comes to photos of people. Thus, it is easier to take photos yourself. That’s why it would be beneficial to show selected art works made from stock photos that will inspire beginners to create.

Mart Biemans on search by image:

Finding the right stock photography can sometimes be a struggle. As an artist I want to spend as much time as possible on my artwork.
What might help is a reverse image search. If you have an image that comes close to what you’re looking for, you can upload it and get suggestions of similar images.

Louise Mertens on additional opportunities:

It’s hard to say. Sometimes I think how nice it would be to download pictures with all objects on different Photoshop layers so it would save even more of my time.

Giacomo Carmagnola on the importance of keeping up with trends:

The evolution would probably be adding new types of subjects on stock photo platforms. Digital art right now has a lot of particular new subjects. So it’s easier on a website like Depositphotos to find subjects, but it still requires some research work.