The stock photo library we chose not to build

The trap of the obvious feature

When you're building software for creatives, there's a gravity well around certain features. Stock photos sit in that well alongside templates, fonts, colour palettes, and preset filters. They feel foundational. A photographer without a mood board tool can still work. A photographer without stock images? That seemed like an oversight.

We ran the numbers. We talked to fifteen users in the week before deciding. What we heard was consistent but counterintuitive. A portrait photographer told us, 'I never use stock images. I shoot my own work.' A graphic designer said, 'If I need a stock photo, I go to Unsplash directly. I don't need my project management app to be my image source.' A videographer was more blunt: 'That would actually slow me down. I know where my images are. I don't want to hunt through a library inside another app.'

The pattern wasn't hard to see once we looked. Creatives already have image sources they trust. They have workflows. They have opinions about where to find the right image for the right brief. Bolting a stock photo library into Creatr wouldn't save them time. It would fragment their process.

What they actually asked for instead

Our users didn't ask for stock photos. They asked for something more specific. They wanted their mood boards to live alongside their project briefs. They wanted to upload their own reference images and organize them by client, by mood, by project phase. One designer sent a voice note: 'I need to show my client why I made a design decision. I need that reference image right there in the brief, not buried in a Pinterest tab.'

That's a different problem entirely. It's not about access to millions of generic images. It's about managing the images that matter to your specific work. Your own photographs. Your client's assets. The reference mood you built to sell a direction.

So we built mood boards instead. Three of them on the Free tier, unlimited on Studio. You can create a mood board, attach it to a project brief, and share it with your client as part of the discovery phase. The images stay in your control. Your storage, your choices, your workflow.

The philosophy underneath

This decision came from something deeper than feature prioritization. When we started MRVL, we made a bet that independent creatives didn't need another bloated all-in-one platform. They need focus. They need tools that do one thing well and then get out of the way so they can use their actual tools.

Creatr manages projects, portfolios, client delivery, invoicing, and briefs. On Studio and Pro, it handles storage integration too. Because here's what matters: a photographer uses Lightroom. A designer uses Figma or Adobe. A videographer uses Premiere. None of those apps need a stock photo library bolted into them. Neither does Creatr.

What Creatr does is create a central place where all of that work lives. Where you invoice the client. Where you gather the brief. Where you organize your mood boards and share them. Where the work actually gets delivered and tracked. The creation happens elsewhere. Creatr is the operating system for the business side.

Adding a stock photo library would have muddied that. It would have made Creatr slightly more like every other tool that tries to be everything to everyone. We said no because saying no kept us honest about what we actually are.

The freedom of better decisions

Since launch, we've had exactly two requests for a built-in stock photo library. Both came from designers at small agencies. Both said the same thing when we explained the mood board approach: 'Actually, that makes more sense for how we work.'

That confirmation matters. Not because it proves we were right, but because it reminds us why we built Creatr in the first place. Creatives are sophisticated about their tools. They know what they need. They don't need us to assume.

On the roadmap right now, we're focused on things our users actually asked for. Better Google Calendar integration. More flexibility in how you organize portfolio pieces. Easier ways to embed client testimonials. Batch actions for managing multiple projects. These are the features we're building because creatives said they'd change how they work.

The stock photo library decision wasn't about being purist or clever. It was about listening long enough to hear the difference between what sounds like a good idea and what actually solves a problem. Most of the time, those aren't the same thing.