If you are an experienced professional image researcher you most likely won’t need the information provided on this page, but want to proceed to see the garden pictures available for download.

In case you never dealt with a stock photo agency before or only occasionally purchase images, perhaps in addition to your own production or the one or the other deal with a local photographer, you may be among the majority of human beings confused by terms like ‘Rights Managed’ or ‘Royalty Free’. You quite likely actually don’t care, you want a picture you saw and found suitable for your next publication. But hang on a few seconds, it’s not just an annoying hurdle put in your way before you press the search button on a stock photography web site, there’s something in here for you as well. So what is it about?

First: Image licensing. Pictures, pretty or not, are intellectual property and belong to the creator (which is in civilized countries protected by copyright law). Quite the same way computer software is distributed, you usually don’t really BUY the software, but a license to USE a copy of it, on your desktop, and perhaps in addition on your portable notebook. (Yes, we all know how many computer programs are installed without a license, and how many pictures get copied all over the internet without a license, but even the ones doing it usually know that things shouldn’t be like that - and certainly not in a professional publication).

Now, the perhaps most common thought among photo buyers is: I want ALL rights. How much?

This question is not precise enough. Because ALL rights could sound to the copyright holder (usually the photographer) or his stock photo agency like you want to be the ONLY ONE who ever can use this picture in whatever imaginable way (an unlimited, exclusive license) or you even want to put your name on to be regarded as the creator (a copyright transfer). Imagine approaching MICROSOFT with this idea: A BUYOUT of WINDOWS would cost ...........?? While, in fact, all you probably want and need is a single copy to run on your home computer.

Unless you find a picture so unbelievable beautiful that you fancy to hide it in your cellar and never want anybody else to be able to look at it but you allow it you simply don’t need to own the copyright (and certainly, the artistic fame should belong to the original creator anyway).

What the thought of ALL RIGHTS seems to be usually about is that photo buyers want no hassle and some freedom. You perhaps don’t know exactly yet if you want to place the image on the front page or inside the magazine you are working on, neither if the first print run really is ready in July or only in August. You don’t know yet if a thumbnail-sized shot of it shall be promoted on your web page. So you basically want a license which doesn’t force you to contact the copyright holder whenever you move that photo in your project.

Such licenses are commonly available these days under the term ROYALTY FREE (RF). It seems this naming first appeared in the early 1990s following clip art on CDs. There are advantages and disadvantages:
First, THE advantage, you are basically free to use the picture whenever and wherever you want to in your project(s) (there may be restrictions in the license contract, see further below). This provides a lot of convenience esp. to smaller businesses and is perhaps the major reason that this license form is quite popular these days.
Second, a disadvantage, but many will not care, in opposite to the more historic, usage-based model, all clients pay the same. A stock market -listed industrial giant like IBM with a multi-million dollar advertising budget pays essentially the same to the copyright holder for using a Royalty Free picture in a full-page national newspaper campaign like a specialized garden magazine with a very limited print run does. Is it fair? As a comfort, the photographer is losing out as well.
Third: THE REAL disadvantage. As every license holder can more or less use the photo whenever he wants, it is not impossible that two competing publications appear with the same image. Though often unlikely, it can happen, and it can happen big. In 2005 three of the leading internet providers in France (Wanadoo, EstVideo and Cegetel) ended up with the same young lady welcoming visitors on their competing web sites.
How much this possible scenario scares you will depend mainly on usage. A strawberry cake probably never gets recognized by the vast majority of readers when appearing inside different magazines (and if, it normally doesn’t matter). An ad campaign relying mainly on a photograph to transfer a message visually will certainly be ruined, which is a silly risk to take considering that the license fees for the photograph are very small compared to the costs for ad spots in any highly frequented media.

To make things a bit more complicate, ROYALTY FREE is not a standardized term, but has a rather broad meaning, which differs somewhat from agency to agency. Most photo agencies don’t really allow the image to be used standing on its own, i.e. in poster reproduction, without the context of a design. Others put a limit on the print run. You should check the list of restrictions provided in the license contract.

A USAGE BASED model, actually the traditional and established way stock photo agencies provide clients, is the RIGHTS MANAGED license. Still preferred by most experienced editorial publishers, many new design businesses seem to be shy of it and try to avoid it whenever possible. Certainly, usage planning and tracking create more work, on the other hand, whenever some exclusivity or at least knowledge about previous/conflicting usage is necessary, this is the way to go. A stock agency offering Rights Managed images will provide such information to the customer. Most more specialized and many high quality images are still only available under this license. Limiting a photo search to Royalty Free only is therefore as well not wise in terms of content.
Many photo buyers fear the costs of the usage based model, even well-known publishing houses these days under increasing financial pressure, while it is actually a MYTH that RIGHTS MANAGED photographs are more expensive than ROYALTY FREE images. For small print run, unspectacular usage spots or anything else connected to a smaller wallet, rights managed photography is in fact adequately cheaper. And in a big budget campaign photo licensing fees are usually not the dominating factor. Selecting the needed usage from a menu is with an online agency a process of a few seconds one gets quickly used to. In so far there’s no reason to automatically favor RF, esp. not if it means excluding images from consideration for a project before even looking at them.

Garden Pictures.com offers collections of both Rights Managed and Royalty Free images. You may consider the points made above to decide which license suits you and your publication best.