From the view of a photo manipulator, I can say that stock artists make up an important pillar of the deviantART community. Without them, the art that is photo manipulation would not be possible, but their work affects more than just those of us with a love for Photoshop. When deviants search the "Resources & Stock Images" category, they are not just looking for a model to cut, paste, and paint over. They are looking for reference images to aid in the sketching of what may be the next Mona Lisa. They are looking for textures to jazz up their latest in-progress artwork. They are looking for the inspiration to tell another story through the pen, pencil, or tablet.

It's a lovely, rosy image, but like many relationships, the one between the stock artist and the photo manipulator has a darker, more abusive side.

While the entire community cannot be generalized into this category, there is an unmistakably large amount of people abusing the generosity of those photographers who put up their work for us to use, and the question has come to this: Are we taking the stock artists for granted?

Listen up, stock users. It's not that hard to credit and fave.

We, as artists, are so adamant against people stealing our work, but are we not essentially doing the same thing if we use stock without crediting? This behaviour has got to stop for as long as there are photo manipulators out there neglecting to properly credit and link, we are biting the hand that feeds us: the stock providers who make our work possible. When this behaviour has driven away deviants like *night-fate-stock, who's been a pillar of stock artists for as long as we care to think about, we are slowly but surely attacking the foundation that holds up our community.

So next time, think about this before you submit. If you don't "have time" to properly credit, do you really "have time" to upload? Police yourselves. If not, who's let to suffer the consequences in the end but you? (And the rest of us!)

Furthermore, we as a community flood the lovely artworks to rain down love and favourites, devWatches and comments. We tell the artist how beautiful their work is. We shower them with compliments.

But what about the stock provider--the photographers who made it all possible?

Too many stock images sit around, lovelorn, while their counterpart photo manipulations rake in the attention. Really, people, it's not that hard to click the "Add to Favourites" button, is it? In fact, "faving" a stock image benefits you, the user, as well since pretty soon, you'll have built up an entire collection of quality stock images you can refer to at any time. Now that's what I call a symbiotic relationship.

In the world of digital art and photo manipulation, we cannot exist without stock artists. It's time to stop taking that for granted.

Fellow deviants, I challenge you to change your outlook on your artistic life, to break out of your dirty stock habits, and to properly show stock artists the love they deserve.

The next time you see a stock photo you simply must use, remember one thing: the "fave" button is only pixels away.


A Feature of Great Stock