Information
The following is for finding images with broken links.
First, it's worth noting that, if you're here because you've found a "best of" option(s) of interest, you have very likely already avoided significant time and tedious hassle searching within and across sites and that's a good thing.
The commercial art industry reality is, however, that sometimes the best options change locations. Could be caused by a creator or rights holder(s) deciding to move to another site for more generous terms. Coud be a license agreement expired and was not renewed, or one source site aquired another and the image URL(s) changed. It could also be a site went out of business, which has happened multiple times in the past decade. The reason a link is not working could also be a technical issue that's easily fixed. If you’re still interested, the good news is that the image exists; here’s what you can do to try and find it again from here.
- The most immediate and powerful option is to do a reverse image search whereby you save the thumbnail image to your desktop (right click, save as) and upload it to Google or TinEyes' reverse image search facility. This enables you to see other locations where the image resides or has resided online, which often includes a source site(s) where you can still buy or license it.
- Most source sites also have search support staff - share the link(s) from here to see if they can determine if an image is still available from them or directly from the creator.
- Another option, if the link has descriptive content detail within it, is to copy and paste the descriptive text into a new open Internet search (just the descriptive text, without the URL). Such searches often turn up the image in question at the top of the first page of search results because they’ve previously been indexed by search engines.
- Another Internet search option exists when the artist, studio or source name is placed on the thumbnail image and / or in the url. Doing a search using (just) such text can often put you in contact with the originator, if not link you directly to the image itself on their site.
We tell you the above because having the right image leads to the best outcomes; finding it is almost always worth the effort.
Worst case, if the image can’t be located presently, you can still use it for inspiration to help you find, or create, the best alternative.
Even with such occasional circumstances, we are far and away the most efficient and effective resource for you to be able to do your best work. We also believe these relatively rare situations will become fewer and fewer and will over time be addressed by source sites in conjunction with artists, rights holders, and ourselves. Original images in demand can always and easily come back on the market. Just takes the rights holder to be aware of the interest, and to say yes.
In short, in a world of billions where even the best options sometimes change locations, we are still very much, and will always be, a site for sore eyes.