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Ecommerce Glossary

Stock Photography, Royalty-Free Licences and Watermarks Explained

Updated: 14 October 2026

Stock photography means ready-made photos that image libraries license to many buyers, usually royalty free: you pay once and reuse the image, but you get no exclusivity and no copyright. Library previews carry a watermark, which disappears once you buy the licence.

Stock photography - what it is and how it works

Stock photography is the business of shooting ready-made photos that image libraries license to many buyers, again and again. Stock photos are taken without a client brief: the photographer picks subjects people are likely to search for, rather than one company's product.

Buying a stock photo gets you neither the file outright nor the copyright. You pay for a licence, which is permission to use the image in defined ways, while the copyright stays with the photographer. Three parties are involved: the contributor who uploads the photos, the library that reviews and sells them, and the customer who buys the licence.

Macrostock, microstock and free image libraries

Macrostock - traditional agencies with pricier licences, sometimes on an exclusive basis. Conventional agencies charge from several hundred to several thousand US dollars per image.
Microstock - low prices and high volume, often sold by subscription. A single licence can cost as little as US$0.25 (Wikipedia: Stock photography).
Free libraries - Unsplash, for example, lets you download and use photos free of charge, commercially and without credit, but you may not sell them without significant modification (Unsplash License).

Modern office with glass partitions, yellow accents and a green sofa, a typical generic stock shot

How much stock photographers earn

Contributors earn a percentage of each licence sold, not a fixed fee per photo. Shutterstock has 6 earnings levels for images, from 15% to 40%, set by your download count, and every contributor drops back to level 1 on 1 January each year (Shutterstock Contributor). Stocksy, a cooperative co-owned by its members, pays 50% on standard licences and 75% on extended ones (Wikipedia: Stocksy United).

At microstock prices, income comes from volume, meaning the number of licences sold, rather than from individual sales. If you are weighing up other ways to earn from a camera, have a look at our photography business ideas.

What stock libraries require from contributors

Resolution - Shutterstock accepts images of at least 4 MP, calculated as pixel width times height, so file size and DPI do not count.
Format and colour - JPEG (recommended) or TIFF without layers, converted to sRGB before upload.
Model release - a signed release for every recognisable person in the frame, including self-portraits, where you sign as both model and photographer (Shutterstock: model releases).

A stock library has no photos of your product, so it cannot fill a product page. For that you need your own shoot and clear rights to the files: at marszalstudio, full rights to the photos are included in the price, and packshots start at €9 net per photo, as shown in our product photography pricing.

Royalty free - what it really means

Royalty free (RF) is a licence you pay for once and then use many times, with no fee for each further use. Royalty free does not mean free of charge, and it does not transfer copyright to the buyer.

A royalty is a fee charged per use, per copy or per period. An RF licence removes it: once you have bought the licence, the same photo can go on your website, into a newsletter and into a printed catalogue with no extra payments (Wikipedia: Royalty-free). Stock libraries sell music, video and illustrations on the same model.

An RF licence is never exclusive. The library sells the same image to anyone who pays, and iStock's licence agreement says plainly that you have no exclusive rights to the content. In return, the licence is perpetual and worldwide, so it works the same way in the UK as anywhere else (iStock licence agreement).

Stock photo library home page with a search box over a starry night sky

Where a royalty-free licence has limits

Print runs - the Adobe Stock standard licence covers up to 500,000 copies; above that you need an extended licence (Adobe Stock licence terms). At iStock, the 500,000 cap applies to physical prints only.
Products for resale - merchandise and templates made to be sold need an extended licence at Adobe Stock.
The file on its own - you may not distribute the standalone file, even under an extended licence.
Logos and trademarks - iStock forbids using its content as part of a trademark or logo.
Editorial use only - these images are meant for news articles and blogs, not for advertising or promotion, even with an extended licence.

Royalty free vs rights managed vs Creative Commons

Image licences differ in how you pay and whether exclusivity is on offer. Rights managed (RM) covers one specific use described in the licence, and any other use means buying a new licence. RM licences can be granted on an exclusive basis, RF licences cannot (Wikipedia: Rights-managed).

Licence	How you pay	Exclusive	Watch out for
Royalty free (RF)	once, then many uses	no	print-run caps, no distributing the file itself
Rights managed (RM)	per use described in the licence	possible	every other use needs a new licence
Creative Commons	free	no	credit always required; NC rules out commercial use, ND rules out changes
Unsplash License	free	no	no selling the photos without significant modification
Copyright assignment	as agreed with the photographer	yes	must be in writing; covers only what the contract says

Royalty free describes how you pay, not the price. That is why the legal code of the free CC BY 4.0 licence also calls it "royalty-free", and all six Creative Commons licences require you to credit the creator.

Watermark - what it is and whether it protects your photos

A watermark is text, a logo or a pattern laid over a photo, usually semi-transparent, that identifies the author or owner and makes unauthorised use harder. It can be visible to the eye or hidden in the image data.

You see it most often on stock library previews: the clean file only arrives once you buy the licence. Photographers also watermark proofing galleries and images they post on social media.

Types of watermark

Text - the photographer's or studio's name, or a web address.
Graphic - a logo, usually saved as a PNG with a transparent background.
Tiled - a small mark repeated across the whole frame, so it cannot be cropped out.
Invisible - information hidden in the pixels and read by software. Article 50 of the EU AI Act requires providers of AI image generators to mark their output in a machine-readable format (more in EU AI Act and product photography).
Metadata and Content Credentials - author details in the EXIF and IPTC fields, plus the C2PA standard, which records the origin and editing history of content inside the file (Content Credentials).

Does a watermark protect a photo legally?

Copyright does not depend on a watermark. Under the Berne Convention, protection must not be conditional on any formality (WIPO: Berne Convention summary), and UK government guidance says protection is automatic, there is no register of copyright works in the UK, and marking a work with © does not affect the level of protection (GOV.UK: How copyright protects your work). A watermark simply reminds people whose photo it is.

Metadata carries more legal weight. Under UK law, if someone knowingly and without authority removes or alters electronic rights management information, such as the author and licence terms stored in a file, while knowing or having reason to believe this enables or conceals infringement, the rights holder has the same rights against them as for copyright infringement (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, s. 296ZG). The same IPTC data, with a Web Statement of Rights URL, also makes a photo eligible for the Licensable badge in Google Images; more on that in our image SEO section.

Can a watermark be removed?

Yes, and automatically. In 2017 Google researchers showed that when the same watermark sits on many photos in the same way, an algorithm can estimate it from the whole set and recover the clean images. Shifting its position or opacity at random did not help, but a subtle random warp of the watermark on each photo was enough to defeat the method (Google Research).

In practice, a corner watermark can be cropped away, and an identical mark across a whole series can be stripped by software. A visible watermark puts off casual copying, not a determined thief.

Watermarks on product photos

On product pages, a watermark works against you. Google Merchant Center does not allow watermarks in product images, including stock photo watermarks, copyright symbols and logos added in post-production, unless the logo is a physical part of the product (Google Merchant Center Help). eBay's picture policy goes further and bans watermarks of any type, including those used for ownership attribution (eBay picture policy); more on selling there in our eBay UK guide.

Protect your shop photos another way: keep the original files and your contract with the photographer, put the author and rights in the metadata, and use reverse image search to find copies. If a competitor lists products with your photos, report the infringement to the platform they sell on.

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How to add a watermark to a photo

Prepare the mark: short text, or a logo saved as a PNG with a transparent background.
In Lightroom Classic, open the Watermark Editor (Edit > Edit Watermarks on Windows, Lightroom Classic > Edit Watermarks on macOS), choose a text or graphic style and save it as a preset (see also: how to get Lightroom for free).
Tick the watermark option in the Export dialogue: Lightroom adds it to every photo you export.
In Photoshop or GIMP, put the mark on a separate layer and lower its opacity; for many files, record an action and run it as a batch.
Watermark the copies you publish, never the original.

Stock photos or your own product photos

Your own product photos are photos taken on your commission, with the rights set out in a contract with the photographer rather than in a stock library licence. Stock works as an illustration for a blog post or an advert, but it cannot show your product, and a royalty-free licence gives you no exclusivity, so a competitor can buy the very same image.

What to check in a contract with a photographer

Assignment or licence - under UK law, for example, the author of a photo is the first owner of its copyright (CDPA 1988, s. 11), and an assignment only takes effect in writing, signed by or on behalf of the assignor (s. 90(3)). Without a written assignment, you are working under a licence.
Scope - which media (website, marketplaces, print, advertising), which territories and for how long. Put it in writing rather than assume.
Exclusivity - whether the photographer may license the same photos to anyone else.
People in the photos - using a model's likeness is a separate permission; check whether it is limited in time or place.

From the studio: at marszalstudio, full rights to the photos are included in the price, with no time or territory limit. The one exception is a model's likeness, which can be used for 2 years. You download the finished photos from a gallery link, and they stay available online for 30 days.

Rail of beige and neutral-toned clothes in a bright interior

You order the shoot online: choose the type of session, the number of photos and any extras, then send the products by courier to our studio in Warsaw. During the live session you mark each photo as OK or for correction. The whole process is described on the how to order product photography page.

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Frequently asked questions

What are stock photos?

Ready-made photos from image libraries that you license rather than buy outright. The photographer keeps the copyright, and many customers can license the same image. Most are sold royalty free: one payment, many uses, no exclusivity.

Is royalty-free actually free?

No. Royalty free means no royalties, that is no extra fee each time you use the image. You still pay for the licence once. Free images come under separate licences, such as Unsplash or Creative Commons, and those have conditions too.

Can I use royalty-free images for commercial use?

Usually yes, within the licence terms. Limits still apply: caps on print runs, extended licences for products made for resale, and images marked editorial use only, which cannot be used for advertising at all. Check the licence of the specific library before you publish.

Do I have to credit a stock photo?

It depends on the licence. The Unsplash License does not require credit, all six Creative Commons licences do, and Adobe Stock images marked editorial use only must be credited to their source. Read the terms of the specific licence before you publish.

Does a watermark protect my photos from theft?

Only partly. It discourages casual copying, but it can be removed, even automatically. Copyright protects a photo without any mark, and in a dispute what counts is the original files, your contract with the photographer and the author details stored in the metadata.

Should I watermark product photos in my online shop?

Not on product pages. Google Merchant Center does not allow watermarks or logos added in post-production, eBay bans watermarks of any type, and a mark pulls attention away from the product. Keep watermarks for previews and for material published outside your shop.

Can I remove a watermark from a stock photo?

Technically yes, legally no. A watermarked preview comes with no licence, so using it with the mark removed means using someone else's photo without permission. You get the clean file once you buy the licence.

Is stock photography profitable?

It can be, but only at volume. Contributors get a percentage of each licence: at Shutterstock 15% to 40% of the price, depending on downloads that year, and Stocksy pays 50% on standard licences. Income depends mainly on how many licences you sell.