Source the right stock photograph for a brief by picking the best library and crafting the search. Use when you need a real photo or image for a hero, blog post, ad, slide, mockup, social post, or thumbnail and you are not sure where to look or what to search, or when someone says "find me a photo of...", "where do I get images for this", "I need a hero image", or "good free stock photos for X". It covers free libraries (Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay), curated and boutique sources (Stocksy, Stills, Death to Stock), broad paid catalogs (Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, iStock), and editorial archives (Getty, AP, Reuters). Do NOT use to decide whether a license actually permits your use or whether you need a release -> use image-license-rights; do NOT use to fetch images programmatically in code -> use stock-photo-api; do NOT use to art-direct a cohesive set or fix a cliched look -> use visual-asset-curation.
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name: Find the Right Stock Photo
description: Source the right stock photograph for a brief by picking the best library and crafting the search. Use when you need a real photo or image for a hero, blog post, ad, slide, mockup, social post, or thumbnail and you are not sure where to look or what to search, or when someone says "find me a photo of...", "where do I get images for this", "I need a hero image", or "good free stock photos for X". It covers free libraries (Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay), curated and boutique sources (Stocksy, Stills, Death to Stock), broad paid catalogs (Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, iStock), and editorial archives (Getty, AP, Reuters). Do NOT use to decide whether a license actually permits your use or whether you need a release -> use image-license-rights; do NOT use to fetch images programmatically in code -> use stock-photo-api; do NOT use to art-direct a cohesive set or fix a cliched look -> use visual-asset-curation.
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# Find the Right Stock Photo
This skill gets you from "I need an image of X" to a short list of strong
candidates from the *right* source. It owns two decisions: **which library to
search** and **what to type into it**. It does not decide whether you may legally
use the result (that is `image-license-rights`), it does not fetch images in code
(that is `stock-photo-api`), and it does not turn a pile of candidates into a
cohesive, on-brand set (that is `visual-asset-curation`).
## When to use a sibling instead
- **"Can I legally use this? Do I need attribution or a model release?"** ->
**image-license-rights**. Always run it before you ship anything commercial.
- **"Pull stock photos into my app / script automatically."** ->
**stock-photo-api**.
- **"I have ten options, which ones and in what order, and why do they look
cheap?"** -> **visual-asset-curation**.
## Step 1: Write the one-line visual brief
… load the full skill through Skill Me