Fotolia is a microstock photography agency and the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations. Fotolia offers one of the largest image bank of free and affordable royalty free photos and illustrations perfect for any medium, web or print hosting (over) 4,556,641 photos in JPEG format and 593,832 illustrations in JPEG format.

Fotolia is designed for both commercial users who need photographs for PowerPoint presentations, company web sites, and for use on profitable products, such as postcards, posters, mugs; and also for private users, who want to use high-quality photos for personal greeting cards, PC wallpapers, and other uses.

They provide means for worldwide distribution of photographs, through PayPal (in the countries that use it), and Moneybookers (another internet payment system offered in more countries than Paypal). Some photographs are offered for free; those that are sold are priced from $1 to as high as $2,000.

All images offered on Fotolia are Royalty free, they can be used for all kinds of professional documents with no limit on time or copies.

I’ve found an interesting feature in the FAQ area and that’s the Fotolia pronounciacion guide .

Fotolia allows both amateur and professional photographers to upload photos to their site, although there are strict requirements, such as size and quality, that must be met before being accepted. The photos are put into a queue where they are reviewed by moderators for aesthetic and technical qualities, and subject popularity. Those that aren’t given the highest reviews are sometimes added to the ‘Free’ section, where artists are not paid by the users, but the advertising fees that Fotolia receives. This fee varies depending on visitors to the site and how many images each visitor downloads.

Each photo is required at least seven (but possibly more) tags to help categorize the image to make searches easier.

Their site offers a multitude of language support as Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Japanese and of course, English.

Easy to use, Fotolia offers the best solutions for stock buyers as well for sellers.