Pricing: Traditional rights protected stock photography

"Traditional" rights-protected stock 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.

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 picture in a specific and clearly defined way. The agency will thereby "control" the "rights" that it grants to you for the fee you both agree upon.

Generally, the fee you will be charged will be 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..

There are many reasons for this pricing structure, but one of the reasons is that a picture you use in a widely distributed project is diminished in value to the agency far more than if that same picture is used in a little brochure.

Why? Well, that’s the other part of "rights protected" that works to your advantage.

How this can work to your advantage

Just as the agency is "controlling" how much you use the picture-- so, too, it can control whether your competitor uses the picture. (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.)

This is, perhaps more than anything else, the one great advantage of "rights protected" stock photography over royalty free: A picture is never used in a way the agency doesn’t know about (unless it’s being used without permission) so the agency can provide a large degree of "safety" that you’re not going to be embarrassed by having the picture you have used in the exact same way by someone else.

Thus, the operative word in "rights protected" is protected: Yes, the amount you can use the picture is subject to strictures-- but the amount anyone else can use it is protected, too.