If you’re new to design, you probably have come across the term royalty free images many times. And there is a chance that you may start to wonder what royalty free images really are. In this article, we’ll go through everything you should know about royalty free images, so continue reading.
1. What are royalty free images?
In this Internet blooming era, you can easily find billions of images created by creatives around the world including illustrations, clipart, and other graphic resources. Of course, these images are not always free to use for all projects. To avoid claims and even lawsuits, there are limitations that you should be well aware of before using any image for you projects, especially commercial ones.
Together with these limitation comes popular terms such as royalty-free, copyright-free, CC0, commercial uses. So what are royalty free images?
Royalty free images are images that can be used without worrying about recurring payments or paying a percentage of earnings made from such resources to the creator or intellectual property owner.
If you are planning to use images on your social media channels, your website or any ready to print products, it is crucial to only select royalty-free ones, otherwise you must pay royalties to the intellectual property owner. Failure to pay royalties can result in legal consequences for using copyrighted material without permission.
In other words, royalty free images are offered with a unique license. Once you pay for the license, you are allowed to use the image in your projects now and in the future. There might be some limitations on the number of items for sales or time of use depending on different license providers. So make sure you read the license carefully before use.
2. When to use royalty free images?
Royalty free images can be used for many kinds of creative projects, especially those with low budget. I suggest some best uses below, including blog posts, ready to print products, SNS ads, digital graphic templates, in-store displays.
Blog posts
You might wonder why we should pay royalty free images just for blog posts. You're right. It's only a suggestion to consider when you need high quality and professional images for your posts.
Of course there are many websites that offer totally free images for such personal use like blog posts, such as illustAC, photoAC, silhouetteAC, Freepik, Pixabay, Vecteezy to name a few.
SNS posts and ads
Posts and ads on social networks need strong and attractive visual to draw people's attention. High-quality royalty free images is a great choice to make people click and share your content.
Print on demand products
Print on demand products like T-shirt, cups, tote bags, etc. could have beautiful preview versions using images and mockups. Your customers will know exactly how your product look like. The closer your visuals are to customers' needs and tastes, the higher chances your products can be sold quickly.
To help you save time and effort, royalty-free images always are good choices. With a wide range of royalty free resources, from line art images for wallpaper, to cute clipart for T-shirt, you will save hours creating your own artwork.
Digital templates
For the templates to showcase your designs online, there is no option better than using royalty-free images. You can sell the templates without any worries about violating any copyrights.
3. When NOT to use royalty free images?
There are some cases that you cannot use royalty free images.
Brand identity likes logos and trademarks
The designs related to branding such as logos and trademarks. The reason is so simple. Brand identity is unique. If you use royalty free images for branding designs, it's not one of a kind any longer since anyone can download and use those images too.
You can find inspiration and ideas from high-quality royalty-free images. However, it is prohibited to download a royalty free, then edit it to make your own logo since the copyright of the image belongs to the creator, not your brand. So if you want to create a logo, do it yourself.
Pornographic, obscene or libelous content
Depending on the provider, royalty-free license will likely prohibit certain uses. Most of providers will not allow pornographic or libelous content.
4. Are royalty-free images free?
Although the term royalty-free might be leading you to think you can use them without paying anything, royalty free images are not free. The “Free” in “Royalty Free” concept refers to the fact that you don't have to pay royalties to the owner of the image (nor to the agency selling the license) every time you use the photo, nor every time the photo generates your profit. Depending on the stock company, the license and price vary.
For example, Shutterstock provides 2 types of licenses, standard and enhanced for many images. The limitations in use of these licenses are different. A standard license allows limited usage in print, advertising, and packaging, but unlimited web distribution, while an enhanced license allow unlimited usage in print, advertising, packaging, and merchandising as well as unlimited web distribution.
Another unique example is illustAC and photoAC. The sites allow users to download images for both personal and commercial uses. You can use the images download for commercial uses when they are not the main elements of your designs. In addition, the sites also provide extra licenses with no limitations.
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