stock imagery
Pre-made visual assets
Stock imagery refers to pre-made photographs, illustrations, or graphics licensed for commercial use rather than commissioned for a specific project.
Businesses and designers purchase stock imagery from agencies or websites when custom photography would be too expensive or time-consuming: The brochure used generic stock imagery of smiling office workers.
The term often carries connotations of inauthenticity—images so polished and generic they feel artificial.
- photographyCreating images from light
- genericNot brand-name
- royalty-freeNo per-use payments
- watermarkTranslucent authentication mark
- commercialPaid broadcast promotion
license · cliché · corporate · handshake · thumbs up · smiling · diverse · placeholder · thumbnail · bland · polished · staged · models · cheesy · microstock · download · resolution · creative
- digital artdigital art, render, 3D modeling, digital illustration, graphic design
stock imagerydocumentary photography
Images recording real events
candid photography · photojournalism · raw footage · street photography · organic content
stock, imagery, image, images, stocks, stocked, stocking, stocky, stockist