Sara Shuman

How to style the STOCK out of your Stock Photography.

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Stock photography is hurting your brand.

Stock photography is generally fine on its own. The problem with stock photos is we’ve seen them on a thousand other sites. More importantly, stock photography can’t offer users authenticity – brand authenticity.

Turns out, they’re hurting your brand image. According to the Neilsen Norman Group, usability and eye-tracking research show that certain types of pictures — including stock photos, funnily enough — are completely ignored by users. Stock photos tell us the brand skimped on design, and so we wonder—what else do they skimp on?

Having a budget to shoot custom photos is rare. But there are many ways to customize stock photography without taking a herculean effort by the production team.

Here’s how to fix it.

  1. Apply your branded colors as filter overlays
  2. Combine partial color transparency overlays together
  3. Add your product into the photo
  4. Isolate an object or person in the photo
  5. Combine multiple photos together
  6. Apply a filter that matches your brand’s color scheme

Here’s an example of an SAP stock image utilizing their branded colors as an overlay at different transparencies, adding a nifty icon lock-up, and a bit of shading to add more focus to the model.