Clearcut and just interesting images

[yayfur]

Greatings all. Please could you critique my website. It is slow I know so please leave that bit out(still hosted at home)

We are going to accumulate as many photos as we can to provide the graphic design community with a good quality alternative to the currently expensive websites selling pictures.

At the moment the website is still in development by myself, my friend is a graphic designer type and will be providing the photos(he is into photography) We want to also provide a clearcut section to save you all some time. The only thing we hope for is that the site can grow and grow, while our images get better and better.

Please have a look and let me know what you think. www.graphic-bank.com (http://www.graphic-bank.com)

Kind regards

[Teej]

So are you selling the images or are they royalty free, a la sxc? I don't see any options to buy the images, so I presume the latter?

I think the blue at the top is too dark to have a black logo on it. Perhaps you should change the logo colour or the background?

Also, when you select an image, the type underneath with all the photo details comes in absolutely tiny. I mean REALLY tiny! Could be browser specific I guess, dunno really... I'm using FireFox on a mac.

Who exactly are you offering these images to? From what I can see they would only be good for web work, or used very small on print work. No choices of size to download?

That said, there are some really nice images there and it certainly shows a lot of promise. I'm always on the look out for quality stock images if that's what you're offering.

[PrintDriver]

A photographer is a professional and deserves to be paid for his/her work.
Only hobbyists give it away for free.
Free stock is exactly what it's worth. Especially on a site with no EULA and no size info.

[Red Kittie Kat]

Also, when you select an image, the type underneath with all the photo details comes in absolutely tiny. I mean REALLY tiny! Could be browser specific I guess, dunno really... I'm using FireFox on a mac.



I'm on IE and I agree... very hard (especially on these old eyes) to read the tiny text.

[Vikia]

I am on a Mac.
I viewed sample pages with Firefox, IE, Safari, Netscape and Opera.
Only Opera had legible font sizes. The others looked like micro fonts.
The logo is not legible on the blue background.
Images took forever to load on the page.

[yayfur]

Wow thanks for all the replies!

To begin with we really want to keep it all free. We will try make some money with advertising (that doesnt get in the way) to keep it going and make it worth while. We will probably shrink the size of the photos for the casual user, and let the registered users have full access to the full sizes. The photographer is the one who helped develop the idea and we discuss everything.

I have increased the font size on the photo info, it was far too small, I was putting off trailing through a css file to change the right setting. Logo is still being worked on, and the content manager can be fickle. I just removed the top menu, looks even cleaner now.

Please take another look. Let me know how it is coming along. My next challenge is going to be how to catalogue the photos, going to have to think about what would be best for the users. This site is for all of you.

Shane

[Broacher]

Meh.

[icekitty37]

i think there are too many small stock sites... they dont go far. sxc is the largest i know of and that i use

[yayfur]

Thanks, we wont be small for long.....and you will use us sooner or later.

[PrintDriver]

Don't place bets.

[yrs]

just not really "feeling" the website.