Stock photography resources

For those curious this is what a standard page looks like.

Now what would you think if you saw a page like that?

Nikolas, it's explained here: [URL REMOVED by TIM]
Basically, it means that, unlike with traditional (rights-managed) licensing, you pay a one-time fee and for that you get to use the image in any way you want, forever. With rights-managed licensing, you pay for a specific use and that use only. For example, I just had someone contact me who wants to re-license an image for use for a longer period. I've also recently licensed one image five times to the same people because they want it for a book, web site, direct mailing, etc., and there's a fee associated with each use. With RF, you license it once and that's it.

The word "buy" is a bit misleading because you're not actually buying the picture but instead a license to use it in either a very specific way (rights-managed) or without regard to use (royalty-free). The word "free" is probably unfortunate, too. It's still a copyrighted image and doesn't belong to you, even if you license it RF. Free in this context means you're free to use it for the agreed licensing fee without need to re-license for additional use.

I hope that helps and I believe your misunderstanding was genuine.

Edit by Tim, explanation is good enough without the link love,

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I understand, but don't you think that the alamy site is a little misleading?

I am sure that there will be hundrends of people who using your photos without buying them because of this statement.

Since we're on the topic I have a question: would watermarking the image make it more obvious that you need to pay for it? Some of us have been trying to encourage Alamy to do that and most stock agencies in fact do.

Since we're on the topic I have a question: would watermarking the image make it more obvious that you need to pay for it? Some of us have been trying to encourage Alamy to do that and most stock agencies in fact do.

Watermarking generally slows a site down if being done on the fly, and causes compression issues (not a problem on a preview perhaps) for security purposes you would be better of with some sort of steganography solution, I use this on my photos, storing which stock photo site I'm distributing the image from etc but that's at a personal level.

I think the problem is easy to avoid just take down the line about downloading to the computer, and make the buy now button prominent (good business practice)

Good point: doing the watermarking on the fly would probably be pretty resource-intensive for a site that busy. I don't know how they generate the preview images. Re-sizing on the fly probably wouldn't be a good idea, either, so I would tend to think the previews are pre-made. Other sites commonly do watermarking and in fact Alamy used to. The thing about downloading is meant to allow people to make mockups to experiment, get approval, etc. but, yes, I can see where that might lead to the wrong conclusion.

I agree about steganography. It would certainly help with web usage and I have to think that's pretty much all you could do with images of that resolution.

Comp = compensate => free

Right or wrong, the implication on the screen Tim showed is that the image can be downloaded for free. I'm guessing the intent here is to allow folks to better evaluate the image to see if it meets their needs before they purchase it. Truly a customer friendly idea; but, not a good way to protect the copyrights of the photographers.

I have learned from my own sites and those I frequent that most site visitors do not take the time to read TOS, About, and other pages that contain the policies of the site. The best option is to ALWAYS list the policy alongside the item being discussed.

Rather than allowing potential customers to download the images, it might be better to have a link to a full-sized image and include the image's dimensions and (aw shoot can't think of the word that means pixels per inch and those types of things). As it is done now, it encourages people to 'borrow' and use the images without permission.

Too many of us English speaking folks forget that there are many customers like Nikolas and Olaf for whom English is a second language. Royalty free is indeed a concept that many, even those who would be classified as professionals, do not fully understand.

istockphotos.com - you have to pay to get photos however the pictures are very good quality wise.

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I understand, but don't you think that the alamy site is a little misleading?

I am sure that there will be hundrends of people who using your photos without buying them because of this statement.

how hard is it for them to indicate that "The images here are not free?" just one sentence will clear things up greatly.

anyway, here are my resources:

http://stellar-one.com/public/us_federal_government_public_domain_images.htm
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/histlink.htm#Public
http://www.library.uni.edu/instruction/guidepublicdomain.shtml

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