Find Great Unsplash Stock Art Quickly With Stock Solo
You may have heard of Unsplash, a stock photo site where you can find high-quality images that you can use for free, or with an attribution.
It’s a nice alternative to Adobe Stock, and now it’s even easier to incorporate into your workflow with the help of a new add-on by Stefano Bernardi of Redokun.
StockSolo adds a panel (found under Window > Extensions) that you can use to search and place images from Unsplash.
Once you’ve found an interesting image, just move your pointer over it to see the details and a Place button.
Clicking Place brings up a dialog box where you can name the linked copy of the photo and choose a location for it.
Once the image is saved, you’ll have the normal loaded place cursor for placing the image into your layout.
Stefano is also working on a version of StockSolo for Adobe XD. So stay tuned for that, and in the meantime, you now have a super easy way to find and place images from Unsplash. Thanks, Stefano!
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Thanks for the link to Unsplash. I write on medical topics and often need relevant pictures, so I checked on the results searching for “hospital.” Most of the results are definitely not typical of the usual stock photo websites.
Some are simply unusual. https://unsplash.com/photos/L4iKccAChOc
Many seem too real to be scripted. https://unsplash.com/photos/9Eb-bpTXglM
Some are historical. https://unsplash.com/photos/IrqLPsxemQ4
Others are very graphic. https://unsplash.com/photos/WxOZNy7SPkA
There are also emotionally moving pictures. https://unsplash.com/photos/qgKF2QkwReU
Definitely not your typical stock photo provider. My only frustration is that it seems to over select. Search for two words and it shows results with either. Search for “Navy Seal” inside quotes got me a lot of seals (the animal) and a lot of warships but nothing resembling a U.S. Navy SEAL.
–Mike Perry, Inkling Books
Hi Mike, unfortunately we don’t have control over the Unsplash library. However, we are considering expanding to more libraries and software (for example, we just submitted the version for Xd), so hopefully the images available will improve with time :)
This is great! I use Unsplash a lot. Can’t wait to try this out.
Hi Anne-Marie! Happy to hear that!!
Mille grazie, Stefano!
The extension won’t install. It says “acquired”…when I try to download for a manual install, it says “unauthorized”..but I’m logged into my Creative Cloud account.
Hi Derek, can you get in touch with me at stefano {at} stocksolo {dot} com so I can try to help?
Otherwise, you can go here https://redokun.com/blog/stocksolo – and try the instructions under “What to do if you have problems with the installation”
This sounds great. This is the kind of thing I have constantly added when InDesign asks for feedback. Why can’t I link my LightRoom or ON1 or other photographic databases into InDesign to save me exporting and then importing. Could also be useful for online sites like photodeck.com.
PS for medical images welcome to get in touch https://photolibrary.cladonia.co.uk/ some I can’t really upload to a library.
Is it compatible with legacy InDesign, such as CS6?
Hi Lise, unfortunately, the plugin is compatible only with new releases (If I remember correctly > 2016).
Supporting old versions would be so much time consuming and we cannot afford that for a free project. Sorry to let you down but I hope you’ll understand ☹️
A quick update, we are waiting for approval to introduce two new libraries of free photos: Pexels.com and Pixabay.com
A big “thank you!” for this!