Getty Images continues to make its massive collection of content more accessible to consumers. The media agency has unveiled a revamped iOS app for its iStock subsidiary, followed by a new version for the main Getty Images site on July 17, 2014. Like Getty’s latest initiative, the two apps allow anyone to use the content for free, as long as it’s for non-commercial use.

In addition to the creative and editorial media available in both Getty Images and iStock, app users can also browse through Getty Images’ photo archive. The apps let you save your favorites to a lightbox before purchasing, share said lightbox with others like clients and coworkers, or embed select images to blogs, websites, and social media sites for free. Getty says that on the iPad, users can pinch and zoom on an image, although we’re not sure why you wouldn’t be able to do that with an iPhone.

One reason why Getty is updating its apps is because more creative professionals – the ones who purchase and utilize stock images – are moving toward moving toward mobile devices in their workflow (it’s a trend Adobe is recognizing as well). Consumers, of course, have been driving up mobile adoption. Getty quotes stats from Comscore that shows 55 percent of Internet usage in January 2014 stemming from mobile devices, and apps made up 47 percent of that traffic. Consumers are also blogging and uploading more from their phones and tablets, so there’s a large potential customer base there.

The updated apps are fairly demanding. They require an iPhone 5 or iPad 3 or higher, and these devices must be running iOS 7.

(Via Getty Images)

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