Buying and downloading
These are guidelines to help you buy and then download images
- Register and / or log in
- Search for image(s)
- Calculating price / choosing a licence
- Your shopping cart and buying later on
- Payment options
- Purchasing the image
- Printing your invoice
- Downloading your images
- Alamy Images terms and conditions for buyers
- Download failure and downloading images again
- Technical problems
Register and / or log in
Registering is easy and only takes a few moments. Once registered you can log on at any time to use our price calculator, purchase and then download images from Alamy.
Search for image(s)
Please see our search tips.
Calculating the price and choosing a licence
You can calculate the price of an image before or after you add it your shopping cart and you can recalculate the price until you proceed to checkout.
You need to be logged in to view the price calculator. Then, follow these steps to then price an image at any time:
- Click on the calculate price icon,
, next to the image you want to purchase. - The image will then appear with the price calculator. If you are purchasing a traditional licence, and you may have the option to rights protect the image. Choose the image size if it is a royalty-free licence.
- Click the calculate button to calculate a price.
- Click the Add to licence to cart button to add the image to your shopping cart.
How to use the price calculator
The options you choose in the calculator will affect the price, and will determine the terms of your licence to use the image. Please look at the key below for an explanation of each of the drop down menus displayed in our price calculator:
- Image use
- the basic use for the image.
- Details of that use
- more information on how the image will be used.
- Image size
- the size in which the image will appear on your layout page (in proportion to the overall size of the page).
- Print run
- the total number of printed copies you are producing.
- Inserts
- the number of newspaper/magazine editions your piece is appearing in.
- Placement
- where the image will appear in a brochure/pamphlet/periodical.
- Starting date
- the date you will start circulating your piece of work containing the image.
- Duration
- the length of time the image will be used for.
- Territory
- geographical region in which the image is to be distributed (not where you are buying the image from). Please choose from the following territories - US State, Group of North American States, Country, Region or World Wide
- Country
- geographical region within the territory in which the image is to be distributed.
- Product industry
- the main business area of the product/service you are promoting. This field is mandatory and enables us to provide rights control on some of the licensed images.
- Industry details
- this field is mandatory and details the product/service you are promoting.
- Rights protection tick box
- this option is visible if the image is available for exclusive rights. It calculates the price based on your having exclusive rights to the image - the rights could be based on territory, time, sector. More information on licensing and rights protection.
- Click on the calculate price icon,
Your shopping cart and buying later on
You can leave an item in your shopping cart for another time, and return to it by logging on and clicking the Your shopping cart link at the top of the page. You can then proceed directly to checkout. If you have chosen an image that is not royalty-free, bear in mind that if you leave it in your shopping cart, someone else may find it on our site and then purchase it. An image is available to buy until it is licensed and paid for.
At the bottom of the shopping cart you will see these features:
- Apply this usage to all licensed images in your cart
- this allows you to apply the same licence details to all the images in your cart
- Add another licence to this image
- this allows you to calculate another licence for the same image whilst saving the licence you have already calculated.
Payment Options
- By credit card
- We accept American Express, Visa and Mastercard.
- On account
- You may Apply for a 30 day credit account online via My Alamy. Please contact us should you require any assistance. Accounts are set up at the discretion of Alamy.
Purchasing the image
- Once you have selected your image(s), and calculated the price, click Your shopping cart at the top of the page.
- After calculating prices for all the images in your shopping cart, click the Go to checkout button.
- For security reasons, you will be asked to verify your password.
- You are now in Order summary and payment. There are five sections to this page. If at any point you do not wish to continue, click the Cancel your order button at the top or bottom of the page, if you quit by just closing the browser window you will be locked out of your account (My Alamy)) for a 15 minute period.
- Billing details
Confirm your contact and invoicing details and amend if necessary - Summary
Check your order summary - Agree to Alamy’s terms and conditions
Check the tick box to confirm - Optional invoice information
Here you can add any extra information with regards to you order - Payment verification
If you are paying on account you will see your account number, then click 'Complete your order' to finalise the process. If you are paying by credit card you will need to enter the number or confirm a previously used card and again click 'Complete your order' to finalise the process.
- Billing details
- At the end of stage 5 you are asked to click Complete your order, which will debit your credit card or account, and purchase the image(s).
- You will then be able to download your images.
Printing your invoice
Log on and click My Alamy at the top of the page, then click View all previous orders. You can print an invoice of any of your previous orders from here at anytime.
Downloading images on a PC
- Decide the file size you require and click the appropriate link below each image (you can only download one image at a time).
- You will be asked either to open it immediately, or to save it to disk.
- Click Save to disk, choose where to save the image. Then click save.
- If you choose to open it immediately into your browser and do not save it at that point, you will have to download the image again if you need to use it in the future.
Downloading images on a Mac
- Decide the file size you require and click the appropriate link below each image (you can only download one image at a time).
- The image will open in a new browser window.
- Click your mouse and hold, or press control and click together, to open a pop up menu.
- Select the Download Image to disc option and choose the location where you would like to save the image.
- You can monitor the download using the Download manager from your Tools menu.
Downloading tips:
- See the table of approximate download times.
- Important note for 48MB, 28MB and 10MB files. Our images are compressed for download - if opened in your browser window, these images will decompress to their full size on screen. This could cause out of memory errors. To avoid this happening with a PC, save the files directly to disk by following our download instructions above. With a Mac this cannot be avoided so please wait until the image has downloaded to a new browser before saving it to disc.
- If you choose to navigate back to this page after bookmarking it, you will be asked to login again first and will then be taken directly to the download page.
- If you have not downloaded the images within the licence duration, you will not be able to continue and it will show up as Licence expired. Please remember that you can only use the image for the duration specified in the licence - unless they are royalty-free images.
Alamy Images terms and conditions for buyers
You must agree to these terms and conditions in relation to whichever licence you have chosen:
Download failure and downloading images again
If your image download fails for some reason, please do not re-purchase that image. All purchased images are available to you for downloading again. Royalty-free licensed images are available at all times for downloading (unless they have been removed from the collection altogether). If you have continuing problems, please contact our sales team.
Technical problems
If you are experiencing technical problems please see our frequently asked questions or contact our technical team.