Types of Stock Photography Images

When looking for specific stock photography images for a project, it’s important to note what type of image you are going to use. Most stock photography sites will have a few different types of stock photography images for usage. The three main types of stock photography images are released images, rights-managed images and royalty free images.

Here are a few guidelines to help you decide which type of stock photography image is right for your project:

Released Stock Images

Released stock images include model released and property released stock images. These are images for which the models or the owner of the property in the image have signed releases for, therefore making the images available for licensing through the stock photography company. It is important to make sure that the stock images you pick out for your project are released images or you will have to try to obtain the releases on your own.

Rights-Managed Stock Images

Rights-managed stock images are images for which you need to pay for every usage of the image for a set period of time. For example, if you want to use the stock image in a print advertisement campaign and a printed brochure, that would be two usages. You will need to estimate the audience size for each advertisement. For the print advertisement, calculate the circulation of each insertion as the audience size. For the printed brochure, use the print run as the audience size. Most stock agencies have a default licensing period of six months to one year, but there are other options usually available. Be sure to mark your calendar for a few weeks before the stock image license expires so that you have time to remind your client and arrange for a renewal or to ensure that the marketing materials containing the images have been discontinued.

With rights-managed images, you can often arrange for exclusive use of the stock images during the licensing period. This means that competitors won’t be able to use the same stock image in their marketing materials or that the stock image won’t become over used and/or become less effective in your marketing materials.

Royalty-Free Images

Royalty-free stock images are licensed for an indefinite period of time for as many marketing pieces as desired; they don’t have a per usage charge. Royalty-free stock images are licensed instead of purchased because they can still be used by others. By licensing the stock images you agree not to resell them. An added bonus of royalty-free stock images is that they are released images, so you already know that all the releases have been handled.