Understanding stock image licensing

As a photographer you retain the copyright. Alamy just licenses your stock images for customers to use.

There are two image license types you can choose from:

• RM stands for Rights Managed. With this license, the customer only pays for what they’re using the image for. Rights Managed licenses can define how, where, when or for how long an image is being used.
• RF stands for Royalty Free. Customers pay a one–off fee to use the image with no restrictions on how they use it, or how long they use it for. RF images can be used across multiple projects, forever.

Our customers are increasingly asking for broader rights so we’d recommend selling your images as RF but the decision is yours. You can choose a different stock photo license for each image you upload, but we suggest not giving the same or very similar looking images different licence types.

If images contain people or property they need to have the right releases to be sold for commercial use.

If you choose to sell all your images under one license type, you can set a default by clicking the cog button in Alamy Image Manager.

What classifies an image as Exclusive to Alamy?

Below we have answered some frequently asked questions surrounding what classifies an image as exclusive.

Different versions of the same image

Similar versions of the same image that are available on other licencing platforms can’t be marked as exclusive (i.e. B&W, different crop, or slight adjustments). However, images that are from the same shoot, but shot from a different angle or the model is posing differently, is considered a different image and can be marked as exclusive if that particular shot is not available elsewhere.

Facebook and Instagram

You can upload exclusive images to Facebook and Instagram.

Selling direct

Images can be sold through your own website or directly to customers and still be marked as Exclusive on Alamy.

POD sites

Images that are available via POD sites can be marked as exclusive as long as they’re not offered for additional licencing through the POD site.

We consider additional products as mugs and towels the same as prints.

Images of artwork

Images of artwork in context can be marked as exclusive. The general rule of thumb is that the artwork can’t take up any more than 1/3 of the image frame.