Help center: Licensing

Help centre

FAQs

Licensing

Licensing photos, illustrations, videos and music clips

When you download an image, video or music clip from Getty Images, you’re not buying the file itself — you’re buying a licence that lets you use the content in your projects.

Royalty-free licences
Most of our photos, illustrations, videos and music clips are available under our standard royalty-free licence, which is our most common licence. It lets you use them in a wide variety of projects, including advertising, websites, blogs, presentations, video productions, podcasts and more. Because these files are royalty-free, you only pay for the initial download of the file and don’t have to pay the creator a royalty each time you use it. Your licence lets you use the content as many times as you want, wherever you want, for as long as you want (within the terms of the content licence agreement).

Rights-managed/rights-ready licences
Rights-managed editorial images and rights-ready video clips are different from royalty-free images and video clips, because your licence is based on how, where and for how long you intend to use the content. Since the licence you’re paying for only covers a specific use, you can’t use these images or video clips in additional projects without purchasing additional licences. Getty Images no longer offers rights-managed licences for creative images.

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Ownership of a licence

Unless you identify someone other than yourself (or your company) as the “licensee” at the time of purchase, the right to use the content as outlined in our content licence agreement stays with you.

You can transfer ownership of the licence to a third-party individual or company (such as a client) by entering their name in the Licensee field in the Reference notes section at the checkout. Licences purchased with prepaid packs or subscriptions are not transferable.

For more information, check out our content licence agreement
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Royalty-free (RF) licences

Most of our photos, illustrations, videos and music clips are available under our standard royalty-free licence, which lets you use them in a wide variety of projects, including advertising, websites, blogs, presentations, video productions, podcasts and more. Because these files are royalty-free, you only pay for the initial download of the file and don’t have to pay a royalty each time you use it. Your licence lets you use the content as many times as you want, wherever you want, for as long as you want (within the terms of the content licence agreement.)

For more information, check out our content licence agreement

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Rights-managed (RM) and Rights-ready (RR) licences

Rights-managed editorial images and rights-ready video clips are different from royalty-free images and video clips, because your licence is based on how, where and for how long you intend to use the content. Since the licence you’re paying for only covers a specific use, you can’t use these images or video clips in additional projects without purchasing additional licences. Getty Images no longer offers rights-managed licences for creative images.

For more information, check out our content licence agreement

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What happened to rights-managed creative images?

We’ve made it easier and more affordable to licence creative images by moving to an entirely royalty-free creative image collection that includes the best of our former creative rights-managed images. As a result, we’ll no longer licence any creative RM images.

Any creative image with an active rights-managed licence will remain available under the terms of that licence until the licence term expires.
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How licensing relates to copyright protection, ownership and infringement

Every file you download from Getty Images comes with a licence, which allows you to use your image, illustration or video for a wide variety of uses in the case of royalty-free licences, or specific uses based on where, when, and how you use the file in the case of rights-managed editorial images and rights-ready video clips. You do not own the file, but you have the right to use it.

If you use a file in a project without licensing it, you are infringing on the copyright and can be held liable.

Learn more about how copyright applies to you
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