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In stock photography, rights are sold to use an image. The sale of use rights is known as licensing. There are 2 main types of licenses used in stock photography: Rights Managed and Royalty Free.

Stock photos are copyrighted, meaning someone owns them. In order to use them legally, you need permission. Such permission is known as a license, a contract that authorizes you to use the image in certain ways. Without a valid license, you cannot use a stock photo.

The photographer or author of a stock photo makes it available for licensing, meaning you can pay a fee to get the right to use the stock image in your designs legally. One of the most popular license types is that of Royalty Free, which gives a wide range of usage rights over one stock image for a very low cost.

Your image license agreement will determine if the photos you produce can be used commercially or not, who has the rights to use the images, how long the client has the right to use the images, and if there is a time at which they can no longer use them or you can re-sell them.

Attribution-NonCommercial: CC BY-NC This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

In general, there is no right or wrong way to license images, and license requirements depend on the images and their purpose. You can, however, choose your licensing agreement based on the type of photographer you are. Creative commons and stock licenses, for example, are better suited to hobby photographers.

A royalty-Free license is customized for every stock photo site, but in general terms; it gives you the right to use any image in commercial, editorial, and personal projects, without any limitations regarding geographic area or duration.

The agreement used to grant photo usage rights legally is called a license. In general, there are some restrictions on the scope, type, and limitations covered by image licenses. Licensors grant licensees photo usage rights for an image in exchange for a fee, also known as the licensing fee.