Royalty Free versus Rights Managed

Generally, royalty free license is cheaper than rights managed.  They are priced licenses widely offered across stock photography industry. They cost at a low price, making them affordably available for use by different people and companies. Although stock photography agencies have millions of choices, most of them have filtered the images according to popularity and quality. So buyers are most likely to choose from a reduced set of images and possibly choose the same ones. The pricing of the license depends on the usage and availability of the material. As for rights managed images, they are exclusive used on the duration of the licensed period.

There are a lot of royalty free images sold by stock photography agencies online. Among the popular agencies are Shutterstock (www.shutterstock.com), Getty Images (www.gettyimages.com), iStock by Getty Images (www.istock.com), Fotalia by Adobe (www.fotalia.com), Adobe Stock (stock.adobe.com).

The most renowned stock photography agency is the Getty Images which has over 50 million various images and videos for commercial and editorial use. They offer big discounts and savings on large sets of stock photography. Getty Images also owns iStock which has a wide collection of images for commercial uses.

Shutterstock has increasingly grown its collection of 100 million materials. As of to date, they have over 800,000 new stock images added weekly. They also offer subscription and packages for a simpler pricing range.

Fotalia by Adobe and Adobe Stock offer over 55 million royalty free contents. They have subscription offers, depending on your intended use. They have purchase options for single image, package subscriptions and HD and video packages as well.

The best image licensing option for you depends on your projected usage of the content, pricing and budget as well. If you are a blogger or web designer, royalty free is the best option for you. However, rights managed is advisable if you want people to associate the images to your brand or if you want to gain exclusive rights.