What Are Royalty-Free Stock Photos?
Royalty-free stock photos are high-quality photos that you can buy on-line. They are “royalty-free” because you don’t have pay “royalty” to the original creator of the image once you have bought it. In other words, you can now claim it as your own and thus can do whatever you want with it. You buy the “copyright” of the photos when you buy it.
Benefits of Using Royalty-Free Stock Photos
The most evident advantage of using royally-free photos is you cut down the cost of your ad campaign, or website production by just resorting to buy royalty-free images in it, instead of hiring a model and photographer.
How much is the Usual Cost of Stock Photos?
The prices of royalty-free stock photos vary from one website to another. Small stock photography websites may charge as little as $0.99 per image, while big ones may charge $ 30 to $ 100 per photo. Sometimes it also depends if you will buy full license over the photo or not. If you want other not to use your photo, it will be more expensive. But if you wouldn’t care less, it will be much cheaper, as other people can also use the photo.
How Do Stock Photo Websites Make Sure That People Can’t Just Copy the Images?
You may be wondering how do these stock photography websites protect themselves from picture robbers. Actually, photographers use a variety of techniques to protect their photos from being used without permission—in other words, from being stolen. For instance, some make sure that the royalty-free stock photos are encrypted. There are also some who put it at a low resolution, or re-sized to thumbnail proportions prior to purchasing a license. Finally, there are also some who embed watermarks in their stock photos.