One source for Great Stock! images

South African users will be pleased at the inclusion of the works of local photographers of the calibre of Horst Klemm, Michael Meyersfeld and others, as there has been a significant demand for high-quality images that relate to the South African experience. International collections make up the bulk of the content on the site, coming from about twelve respected international collections.

Heart of the system is eMotion's MediaPartner software, which offers sophisticated Advanced, 'Boolean' and 'Natural Language' search options, as well as 'search within results' to refine a given set of results. Free 'comp-size' images are downloadable for layout and presentation purposes. Collaboration is facilitated by handy 'lightboxes' in which clients may store selected images, and share them with other players involved in the project.

MediaHost provides software and hosting of the site, which is expected to provide easy access (direct from the backbone) to more than 100,000 images by year-end. The number of images on the site is expected to increase significantly during 2003. Front-end design was provided by Produce Interactive, which created several promotional campaigns that are rolling out with the launch of the site.

Great Stock! has elected not to enable the e-Commerce feature at this stage, preferring to give clients the benefit of their personal approach to picture research, which the company says, is highly valued by its clients in the advertising, design and editorial segments.