Quick Link: LuckyOliver.com
July 09th, 2007
LuckyOliver is another entry into the stock-photo market. They’ve been around for a bit of time now. I first heard about them when I was down at South by Southwest, where they gave out these nifty beer coasters as promotional giveaways. So what makes them different then the venerable iStock? Well, they’re both stock photo sites, so you’d expect similarities. iStock seems to have generally higher quality work, but you can find some great pictures on LuckyOliver.
iStock also has videos now, which is something not available at LuckyOliver. Then again, videos are generally only useful if you’re doing very specific Flash work, and even then the video selection from iStock leaves a little be be desired (although, to their credit it is growing every day, and finding high-quality video clips is getting easier and easier).
So what does LuckyOliver have over iStock? In a word, attitude. They still exude that “small team of guys trying to make a run of this” feel. Their blog is candid, and fun. The site is designed to look worn, but the interface remains clean and clear - but still “flirty”. Running a search? They offer you the option of “no nudies”. Your “control panel” is called the “Big Top”, and also offer the “Odditorium”. Cute. There are other interface niceties there as well. When you first sign up, they give you a simple 2 option choice box. “Ready to buy, or read to sell” - attractively presented. I have no interest in uploading or selling images, and the presentation left me feeling like I knew what I needed to do next. Even when they nag you for money, its well presented. “Interested? You’ll need to get yourself some tokens”. Oh yeah, continuing on the carnival theme, they call credits “tokens”.
The search tool looks really promising, but isn’t giving me as accurate of results as I had hoped for yet. A search for “old people” gave me a bikini Ms. Santa Claus and about 8 Shakespeare actors, a police cruiser… a toilet? Um… ok. If they can get that sorted out, they have great ideas. You can search by orientation, be specific about illustrations or photos, licenses and many other options. Nice.
While it doesn’t mean much to me, they do a photo commenting not unlike Flickr, and also offer image tagging, lightboxes, and the other standard fares.
Finally, they seem to offer types of photos that I don’t see too much on other stock sites. Worn, risque type imagery. LuckyOliver has intrigued me enough to add it to my stable of resources, and I’m hopeful it won’t let me down.
This entry was made on July 09th, 2007 @ 5:22 and filed into Quick Links.
Bryan Zmijewski wrote on July 09th, 2007 @ 17:22
Hey Derek, thanks for the post! We’re working hard to create a great site…your feedback is helpful. We make updates to the site almost every day.
I took a look at the old people search result. Pretty bad. On most results we tend to have better accuracy compared to istock. I did a comparison on swimmer, lemon, red car, etc.- we’re pretty good. It’s an ongoing activity to improve results.
One unique feature we have- words to refine your search. When you search for “old people” we have a search tool that is labeled ‘sticky words’. If you click on this it will present you with additional words. If you click on ‘seniors’ you get a much better result. Also, if you’re on a photo we present you with 28 additional images to refine your search. It is pretty handy- something istock doesn’t have.
Thanks again!
Bryan
Chief Instigator