The process of utilizing existing photographs for various commercial, advertising and media purposes is termed as Stock Photography. Especially for individuals in various creative industries like web designing, book publishing, advertising agencies, magazine editors, graphic artists, interior decorators and those working in various creative corporate groups, the availability of stock photographs in online sites proves to be a great boon. Along with providing you an easy way of browsing through thousands of professionally taken photographs relevant to your particular field of work, availing stock photographs proves far more economic than individually appointing professional photographers and obtaining photographs of different entities shot over various locales. Whereas, large databases of online stock photographs allow you to make selections suiting just your precise requirements, availing such existing photographs saves you a lot on time, money and resource investment. Epictura provides a large database of stock photographs to meet your every creative need. Professionally taken and clear in design, their stock images are tailored to suit your every creative requirement.

In most stock photo agency, you will get a wide range of images, available in high and low resolutions to serve your various web and print purposes. Clear, sharp and captured with careful attention to every detail, the stock photographs available are ready for immediate use in your advertising and communication projects. Whereas, the images are all professionally captured by competent photographers, the images are also color corrected wherever required using the latest digital equipments so that the final products you are offered are in their best forms. The stock images available at Epictura are stored as JPEG RGB files in their database so that once you make your selections and purchase the photographs you can easily download them for your work.

The image galleries of Epictura cover a wide range of subjects from holidays and festivals to various everyday categories. From pictures of various seasons like autumn and winter to those of festivals like Christmas and winter sports events, you will find stock images and illustrations in a variety of categories. At the same time, images of everyday topics like beauty, biotechnology, birth, cuisines, environment, life and security are available for your ready use. You can also search for images related to various occupations and workplaces like call centers in their stock photo databases.

Purchasing stock images and illustration from Epictura is as easy as it gets. For your convenience this stock image agency presents a database of categorized resources available under various subcategories. All you need to do is visit the relevant galleries containing photographs of the topic you are looking for and a range of thumbnail images will be displayed to you. You can select the photographs of your choice by simply clicking on the relevant thumbnail to see a larger image and add it to your shopping cart if you plan to consider it for purchase. In you virtual shopping cart you can, in this way, collect (and change) as many images as you wish. Once you decide on the images or CDs you want to purchase, you can simply click on the checkout link provided and specify all your details according to the instructions specified. At this point you enter a secure server page where you specify all your personal details and payment options. No matter how many images you plan to purchase or the financial amount it involves, you can rest assured that all financial transactions are made under the safest conditions. As the server runs with SSL (secure socket layer) whatever information you provide during your financial transaction are encrypted and not visible during the transmission process. As a result of this, your sensitive details are kept confidential. Handled by Worldpay, the world's best secure payment gateway, all transactions made to and from the website are safe and secure. Once you have purchased your photographs, you can download the high resolution image files from your account section. In case you have ordered CDs you can rest assured your purchased products will be shipped to you within 24hrs.

Whereas, all products are checked to provide you the best quality available, in case you are not satisfied with the purchases you have made or want to exchange some defective image, you can easily do so and request for new image file. However, all requests must be made within 48 hours of receiving receipt of images and CDs. In case you want replace some product you have purchased or exchange a defective product, rest assures your replacement will be made available to you within 24 hours in addition to time required for shipping the products.

In addition to an exclusive collection of some of the best photography in the world, the CD collection available at Epictura is also one of the best that you will get today. From family, education and health to lifestyle, landscape and occupations, you will get whatever data collections you may require for your various projects. With over 800,000 images and 2000 CDs Epictura provides some of the widest collections of stock photographs available today. What is even better is that as these images are available in a wide range of prices, you can select whatever you require the most within your budget. Whereas, single images that you select can be downloaded in very short time, you can get the CDs of your choice within 24 hours of placing your order.

A collection of stock photographs is often referred as photo archives and picture libraries. Such photo archives are essentially websites where large image banks containing thousands of stock images are maintained and stored. A look at some stock library section, will give you an overall view of the large collection of stock photographs maintained by the website. Looking through the various categories of images under different sections like 'Digital Vision', 'Medio mages', 'Photodisc', 'Stockbyte' and 'Stockdisc' will give you a glimpse of the large number of collections the site maintains under each category. A look into the 'inspirestock' section will provide you a view of the large range of premium business and lifestyle stock images avialable for your use.

The image files are available in JPEG and RGB file formats in a number of sizes. As a result, depending on the nature of your work and the type of image you are looking for in particular, you can select stock photographs suiting your requirements the best. Whereas, the small files are usually 700ko to 2mb, multimedia 72 dpi and 500-800 Ko in jpeg file size, the medium ones are usually 10mb to 12mb with image size of 1/2page and 1-2Mo jpeg file size. The large files available are 20mb to 28mb, full page images and 3-5Mo jpeg file size the extra large images are 48mb to 55 mb, with double page image size and 3-5Mo jpeg file size. So, depending on type of work you are doing and the type of image you require, you can select stock images fitting your requirement and budget the best. The preview pages will provide you information on the different sizes and prices in which each of the stock images are available.

You can readily use these images in different layouts without having to change the files first. If you are planning to use tem in designing web pages, it would be better to resize the images to fit their final size before using them on your web page. If you decide to use them in offset printing work, it would be helpful for you to translate the files to CMYK mode first. A look into the prices section will inform you on the different rates charged for the various categories and types of stock images available. In all cases, you are granted a royalty free license agreement according to which on your purchasing an image you are granted a non-exclusive and non transferable right to use that image.