Stock photography companies employ a royalty-free type of licence when selling their stock photos.
For a set, one-time cost, this licence type gives the purchaser a predetermined set of rights to use the image in many contexts. As a result, you just need to make one payment for the licence and are free to use it as long as you follow the accepted usage guidelines.
Understanding picture licencing for royalty-free images
The most fundamental idea you need to understand to deal with stock pictures is that you are just purchasing the licence to use the image in a specific way, not the image itself.
The image is still the property of the photographer who took it. He or she is the owner of the copyright, which is the legal word indicating ownership of images, sounds, texts, and other intellectually produced physical or intangible objects. Photographers and other types of artists can sell their work more than once and make more money by maintaining copyright. These photographs are NOT free or copyright-free in any way.
Stock agencies offer rights for the use of the images, but they do not transfer the copyright, or ownership, of the photos to the purchasers.
Profits from licencing sales are shared between the photographer and the agency. Following some arrangements, the user is required to pay royalties to the agency, the copyright holder, or both each time they use the image. This doesn’t occur with Royalty Free. The buyer makes a single, one-time payment for a wide range of rights.
Do Royalty-Free Images Cost Nothing?
No. Images with royalty are not free. They maintain their copyright while simultaneously being licenced for a price set by the stock agency selling them.
It’s crucial to make it clear that you cannot use them for free, even though the name can give you that impression (the “free photo” element may be misleading). The “Free” in the phrase “Royalty Free” refers to the fact that you don’t have to pay royalties to the photographer (or the company providing the licence) each time you use the image or each time it makes you money.
The use of the royalty-free image does require payment, but only once, after which you are free to use it as often as you like for the rest of the time. Therefore, get royalty free images at https://depositphotos.com/.
How Much Are Royalty-Free Pictures?
Although the cost of RF photos varies by agency, they are often far less expensive than other licence types, such as Rights Managed (RM), for instance.
This is primarily due to the nature of RF, which tends to be less expensive than licences that require you to pay royalties each time you use the image because you only have to pay for the licence once and there are no ongoing royalties or other payment commitments.
Depending on the agency’s business model, the price difference between RF photos and RM and other licences may also change. Traditional stock agency Depositphotos supplies RF images for fixed fees, but their prices are far higher than those of microstock: they start at $125 and go up as the image resolution increases.
Microstock companies provide extremely low prices for their RF photos. Their primary selling point is their reasonable prices. Depending on the resolution and kind of image, RF photographs at these businesses can cost anywhere from $1 and $15 when purchased separately. But they can cost as inexpensive as a few cents each with larger upfront payments or with a stock photo subscription.
You are not allowed to transfer or give the image to a third party or share it with other users on a network, intranet, or shared disc.
