Many of our templates use Fotolia Stock Imagery. Stock photography is photography or imagery that is used repeatedly for commercial and non-commercial purposes. Often stock images depict common situations, concepts landmarks, and people.

Stock photography use is very popular with designers, graphic artists, art directors, advertising agencies, and marketing professionals, in magazine ads, websites, and marketing brochures. Instead of hiring a professional photographer to create an image, a buyer licenses an image and the photographer is paid a commission. Photo researchers can save valuable time and money by searching for stock photography through online databases such as Fotolia.com. Images are delivered through direct download or email to the customer.

Fotolia and similar stock agencies are often called image banks or photo archives, referring to the vast electronic data stored online. Other data such as digital illustrations may also be stored.

Images stored at an agency are licensed on behave of the photographer or artist and the agency retains a percentage of the sale. Pricing may be set by the photographer or agency as the needs of the audience require. Prices may range from as little as $1 to thousands of dollars.

Stock photography is commonly sold as either rights managed or royalty free. With rights managed, an individual licensing agreement is negotiated for each use of the image and offers exclusive usage rights at a higher price. Royalty Free stock photography offers the buyer unlimited uses under a single license and less expensive fee. Classical agencies have offered rights managed for many years but the more popular trend with buyers today is royalty free.

Fotolia offers royalty free images licenses with the option to purchase additional rights such as extended royalty free and exclusive buyout. Both of these additional rights allow a customer to sell products with the image and in the case of exclusive buyout be the last customer to purchase the images.

Stock photography is a cost effective method for customers to purchase high quality images, and is a great way for photographers to earn money from their collection of imagery.