After years of working as a professional photographer — and relying on third-party platforms to sell my stock images — I reached a point where I wanted more control over how my work was presented, sold, and licensed. That’s when the idea for Pictono was born.
Pictono is a WordPress plugin designed to help photographers and creatives sell their own stock photos directly from their own website. No middlemen, no commissions, no compromises on how your work is displayed.
Why I’m Building Pictono
As someone who’s been on both sides—shooting, tagging, uploading to stock libraries, and also developing tools for photographers—I knew there had to be a better way to manage and sell images.
I wanted a solution that:
- Lets me showcase images beautifully in a responsive, searchable gallery
- Allows full control over licensing, availability, and visibility
- Makes it easy to update and manage a growing image library
- Keeps everything on my own domain with no platform fees
What Pictono Does (So Far)
Pictono is still in active development, but here’s what it currently offers:
- A dedicated Image Management Dashboard built inside the WordPress admin areas which gives you full control of what images are available for sale as well as allowing you to manage captions and keywords.
- A front end search engine which efficiently searches all images marked available and displays them in a beautiful masonry style gallery (can be listed on any page via a shortcode).
- A favourites option to allow users to shortlist which images they feel may be suitable for their project (can be listed on any page via a shortcode).
- A built-in modal popup for all available images allowing users to view detailed image information and request the rights to reproduce an image.
What’s Next?
The plugin is currently being tested out on my own website @ https://images.jasonfriend.co.uk. The plan is to release the initial version via the official WordPress Plugin Directory.
After that there’s plenty more on the roadmap, including:
- Bulk editing tools for faster workflow
- Full e-commerce integration
- Advanced filtering and keyword search
- Optional license purchase/download system
And this blog will be the place I share all the development updates, photography-related articles, and tutorials for getting the most out of Pictono.
Thanks for joining me on the journey. Let’s build something great for independent photographers.
– Jason Friend (www.jasonfriend.co.uk)