FreeImages
stock.xchng was a website providing free-to use stock photography and illustrations, its name being a reduced version of "stock exchange" and more than 400,000 photos. Until 2009, it operated parallel to its sister site, Stockxpert.com, until the site's parent company, Jupiterimages, was purchased by Getty Images, and the site is now tied in with the iStock library of paid images.
Since its acquisition by Getty Images in 2014, the site was renamed FreeImages in 2014 and the web address now redirects to a freeimages.com URL. It has retained the older SXC images and the link to the iStock website.
Features
The stock.xchng site operated as a hybrid of a picture library site and a social networking site; registered users could set up a personal profile, upload their photographic works to share with other users, write a blog and participate in online forums to discuss and critique each other's work.As a design resource, the site provided a library of high-resolution, royalty-free photographs which may be downloaded free of charge for use in design projects. Although images are free, contributors still retain moral rights and photographs are still subject to usage restrictions.
Stockxpert
Until 2009, stock.xchng operated alongside its sister site, Stockxpert. Stockxpert was designed with a near-identical user interface, but functioned as a commercial microstock photography site, allowing users, through a system of online credits, to purchase and download images for a very low cost, often as low as US$1.On the free stock.xchng website, results from the search engine would also bring up a sample of five images from Stockxpert to encourage users to purchase images from Stockxpert. Following the acquisition of Jupiterimages by Getty in 2009, stock.xchng presented search results from Getty's own microstock site, iStockphoto.
Stockxpert continued to operate as a separate website until its closure on February 11, 2010.