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Rights-Managed Images cost anywhere from one or two hundred dollars for use in a small brochure, to many thousands for national advertising. The price of the picture is determined by how you want to use the picture.
Generally, the fee you will be charged is based upon the scope of your project-- and the permission you receive to use the picture will be limited to that which is outlined on the invoice.
How does it work?
Call up any of the many traditional photo agencies, or select a picture from one of their catalogs, and you will be required to negotiate a fee for the “rights” to use that stock image in a specific and clearly defined way. The agency will thereby “manage” the “rights” that it grants to you for the fee you both agree upon.
Negotiating a rights managed price with a photo agency can be a tricky process. In order to provide you with useful information, and maybe give you an edge, we've prepared a guide you can use when you are dealing with photo agencies on rights managed pricing:
Demystifying Rights Managed Image Pricing
Just as the photo agency is “managing” how the picture is used, and making sure the fee they charge is commensurate with that use, so, too, are they “managing” who else uses the picture besides you.
That way, theoretically, they can prevent your direct competitor from using the exact same image in a competing way. (Not possible with royalty-free.) The corollary is that before you buy a picture you can know where else it has been used, if at all, and then decide for yourself whether you view the prior use as a problem.
We say “theoretically” because this is one of those areas where the “fine print” really does matter: We have found that many people buying rights managed stock images from certain agencies think they are getting a lot more of this sort of competing-use rights management than they actually are. It's in the fine print, and we suggest you read it really carefully if you're paying big bucks for a rights managed image. If you're not getting any real “rights management”, the chances are you're better off using royalty-free images. But we'll get to that...
In the main, the operative word in “rights managed” is managed: Yes, the amount you can use the picture is subject to strictures -- but the amount anyone else can use it can be monitored and “managed”, too.
Royalty-Free Images are most often priced based upon digital file size, and have no concern with how you are actually going to use the images.
The smaller the file size you purchase, the less you can do with the image, so, the lower the fee.
For example, an image delivered to you in a 600 KB file size is fine for website use, or perhaps a multimedia presentation, but would not be sufficiently detailed to allow any print use (brochures, ads, etc.) So they are sold at low prices.
A 10 MB file is fine for print uses up to a point (with that point being, often, a printed size of 5" X 7"). Therefore, under the theory that that use is more substantial than a website use, the fee for the image in that file size is higher.
A 56 MB file is very detailed, can be used as full page ads, and is therefore priced even higher.
And so on: The larger the file size, the higher the fee. But, once purchased in that file size, you can use the image in any way the size you have purchased will accommodate.
(What if you buy a smaller file size and then determine that you need the larger file? It varies from agency to agency. At JupiterImages, if you purchase a low file size, but then want to change to a larger and more expensive size, the amount you originally paid is fully credited towards the cost of the larger file size.)
Royalty-free images are sold as single images, in bulk on CD volumes, and most recently we've seen the advent of subscription services. We've seen discs containing from fifty to several hundred royalty-free images for as little as $50, although $300 to $500 is more common. Subscriptions are the best deal of all, with the ability to download anywhere from 25-250 images per day for prices as low as $100 per month.
So far, “royalty-free” sounds like a pretty good deal, and the question becomes: Why would anyone pay a lot for one image when they can get many images for a little?
Well, there are reasons -- good ones that we'll discuss as we proceed -- but, for now, here's just one of them:
The Kicker:
It's one thing to pay several hundred dollars for 100 or more royalty-free images on a disc. It's another to pay that amount when there are only one or two good images out of the 100 on the disc. (Those of you who have bought some of our competitors' discs know exactly what we're talking about.)
Is a disc with only two or three good royalty-free images on it worth the price anyway? Maybe. It depends on your situation. But if you're assessing real cost comparisons -- all of a sudden paying for a “rights managed” image doesn't look quite so expensive compared to what you are paying for a CD with lots of images-- 98% of which are unusable.
At JupiterImages we are extremely sensitive to this issue. On our disc volumes, we do everything possible to make sure all the images are great, not just one or two.
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