Question

7. What are two different stock image licenses? How are they different?

Answer 1

The two main types are Royalty Free and Rights Managed.

Rights-Managed: The buyer pays a licensing fee in order to be able to use the image. That licensing fee is based on usage. For example: location, type of media, length of time the photo will be used, etc. The buyer can also opt to pay for exclusive rights and there can be restrictions that apply based on all of the above factors.

Royalty-Free: A one-off fee is paid to the photographer by the image-buyer, but the photographer is free to sell that image multiple times to different buyers as much as he or she wants.  Essentially, this is also known as “unrestricted” content. The price for the image is often dependent on the image size (high- or low-resolution). The buyer gets no exclusivity to the image and the photographer might not know when, for what, and for how long the image is used for.