US Still Image Market Outlook to 2028

Market Overview:

Since the dawn of a digitized age since the rise of Covid-19, many traditional work methodologies were changed from office to home based. This resulted in a total digitization which in turn led to the adoption of multiple digital technology even in the working sectors. This led to the rise in graphical representation of information provided. The US Still Images market is a part of the larger stock photography industry, which involves in the licensing of different images for various commercial and creative purposes, such as advertising agencies, designers, media organizations etc.

The United States is currently holding a major part on the still image market amongst which, the Eastern and Western region seemed to be more dominating the market index, with advancements in photos like live captured photos, illustrations on any recognizable structures, images from medical instrument designated to scan the inner parts of a human etc. With leading players like Shutterstocks, Getty Images, iStock, Adobe Stock, the market is becoming a strong destination for media organizations, corporate sectors and IT sectors as well. With advancements like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Language, the arts are pin point accurate to the desired sets of topics provided to them, resulting in an increased amount of demand from other companies requiring graphical information about mostly everything.

US Still Image Market is pillared by some of the major companies that run the state verification as well as the global verification. Players such as Shutterstock, iStock, Getty images, Adobe Stock, 500px, Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash etc. are going on through different competitive advancements to make their workflow and daily routine of regularized stock images creation much more fluent and seemingly easier and secured for the users downloading from them.

US Still Image Market Analysis

• After the Covid-19 pandemic and total lockdown was initiated, many companies started to lose a lot of profit and revenue as their employees were unable to even undergo the changes that needed to be in order for improvement. Infographics training and graphical representation was provided to everyone from a work-from-home basis, making everyone better understand their topics and give larger productivity as their commute time was reduced greatly.
• With traditional ways, many forget the important information and tend to get jumbled from every day-to-day work. For this infographic was made a permanent solution to the companies. Since then, companies are adopting graphical representation through which still image market is growing today in maximum.
• With advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and advanced Dall-E, making images like this has been made simpler and much easier. With this Still image market is giving a rise in productivity to supply of these images. Companies are benefitting through this on a large scale on training, documentary, record saving etc. 

Key Trends by Market Segment:

By Type of Images: The US Still Images Market is segmented by the type of images it provides. It goes from Photos and Others (vectors, illustrations, etc.), where photos are mostly being used as they are having pinpoint accuracy over the things required to cover their topic. Clicked from professional cameras, a photographer has a hands-on experience of the types of pictures needed to be clicked and sent to the companies for final acceptance. This results in a joint revenue generation both for the company and the photographer, making that person stick to this company, making an updraft of employee retention, even when they are working as a freelancer.

By Type of Application: The US Still Images Market is managed by Rights-Managed and Royalty-Free programs which help the company get more customer attention, website traffic and customer retention, making sure some of them become their permanent clients. The Royalty-Free program has managed to draw the most customer attention, making the growth from these customers in a large quantity. This gives the user to obtain any image without having to pay anything extra. Whereas the Rights-Managed allows the user to have a picture all to themselves.

without the risk of any copyrights on that image. It marks the person to the image he has obtained with a small amount for this process, ensuring no infringement is taking place. The rights-Managed has mostly retained customers who are having their own business platform and require multiple stock images.

By Regional Split: Major parts in America are dominant for this particular industry. Some regions like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami (Florida) are heavy for their environmental photos, food and fashion photos and mostly celebrities’ photos which lead to a hefty revenue generation per photo. Shutterstocks and gettyimages are amongst the ruling parties dominating over the US. Over 400 million libraries and stock images, they are always on par with each other, providing stock photos and other images to those companies who are needing them the most.

Competitive Landscape:

With several companies running for the top position, few companies top the others in the still image providing services. Shutterstock, gettyimages and iStock atop other companies in a competitive fashion, by providing more useful photos and illustrations which are needed on demand. These companies withhold the customer’s basic and high end need for raw images and give them their desired needs through these photos and illustrations. With stock images ranging on the basis of purpose from training purposes and write-up purposes in corporate sectors to personal or brand improvement or social media page improvement, all can be done from this market. With the players now taking help from artificial intelligence and deep seated machine learning helps the players with automation towards image generation and transferring to specific client, with secured payment line with ‘Two-factor security’ and human troubleshooters, the players are generating heavy on their revenue part. Not all companies have the Rights-Managed program for which many companies are having low human traffic. Due to multiple copyright issues, people are only visiting those companies which are having Royalty-Free program. But this also causes some of their bought images not to be used in some places due to copyright infringement. For this reason persons who are spending money and buying from Rights-Managed protocols, are getting more benefits.

Recent Developments:

• The US Still Image Market is currently facing a high increase in demand for authentic and diverse content. Due to the rise of complex topics of projects, need for detailed information represented graphically, images for their result are to be precise, accurate and authentic, which has not been used a single time till yet. This demand has shown in the increase in image production with to the point authenticity.
• Incorporating Artificial Intelligence and having deep seated Machine Learning is further producing authentic and necessary images. With Dall-E users can download from either its own website or from their company website, whichever they favor. The companies are using AI to auto-generate images that are required for person to person, making time efficient image generation and keeping it authentic for people to use without copyright warning.
• Up and till 2019, the players of this market was trying to make their database and protocols much better by trying to make better image generation. But with the shift to focus on the user-experience. This made the companies render changes based on what the user needs.

Future Outlook:

US Still Image Market is expected to show a growth and is expected to grow at a CAGR of ~9% from 2022 to 2028 with Government initiatives for more accurate image generation and follow up for user-satisfaction within the US.

• The rise in constant demand for authentic photos and content diversity, with the advent of advancements in technologies has resulted in the profound generation of content keeping in mind the factor of user needs or satisfaction.
• As smartphone cameras can improve and ease up the content creation, an increase in the market and a rise in mobile photography and user-generated content, being used in professional contexts, may be observed.
• An evolution in the licensing of the content may be observed as the question of authentic content can arise if proper licensing is not there. To take such measures, new protocols and complex algorithms are made in order to keep content authentic, and follow user-satisfaction.
• With the requirement of images needed to start anything, it might be provident to keep the source or image type a secret. With increased security over data and privacy over the same will allow users to increase in their image traffic or downloads, generating greater sales.