Week 4: Brief Report on How to Source Images

Even if at the first sight searching for a picture on the Internet, saving and using it seems easy, there are rules to be respected, such as licensing. Nowadays, the Internet is the main source of information and there are a lot of websites that allow you to upload your pictures and share them with the others. The question could be: how do they differ in terms of price and delivery?

For the beginning I will focus on Getty Images (www.gettyimages.co.uk) and Image Source (www.imagesource.com). Both websites have the same policy in what concerns the use of their photos. There are two types of licensing: Royalty-free and Rights-managed. When choosing the first one (Royalty-free) you can use an image as many times as you want, in as many different projects are you like, the price depending on the image size. In what concerns the second one, the Rights-managed licensing is highly stylised, available with exclusivity and the price and licensed are based on usage.  The iStock Photo Gallery has different types of licensing: the complementary Standard and the five Extended Licenses, which differ on the purpose you are using the image for. 

In order to find and manage suitable images to use on Flickr, you should select the advanced search. After typing the kind of images you are looking for or just the key words, there is a box you must tick so as to use the images without problems: “Only search within Creative-Commons licensed content”. After that, you should also tick one or both boxes that refer to how you want to use the images: commercially or to modify, adapt or build upon them. Then, when your received the results of your search and decided on the images you want to use, you must check the right side of the page and read the License Rights. Because you ticked the Creative-Commons license box, you are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) and remix (adapt) the work. If you did not tick that box, you would also find images with “All rights reserved” and the only way in which you can use them is by asking the owner. Like Flickr, there is also another website,  Devian Art , which has the same privacy policy.