We have just purchased a set of images for a general insurance website design we are working on currently for our client.
We recommended royalty free (RF) images since these are affordable and come without the restrictions on usage that are common with rights-managed images.
Royalty free-images have these benefits:
- Unlimited usage - when you purchase aRF image, it can be used virtually anywhere for as long as our client wishes and across different projects. This means that for a relatively low cost our client has access to high-quality images that they are a re-usable asset for an indefinite amount of time.
- Creative flexibility - we are licensed to crop and manipulate RF images as we see fit. For example we might decide the character that monochrome images have would work well for a particular project - with RF images we are free to manipulate the images we have purchased in this way.
- Affordability - the cost of RF images is based on the file size and resolution, not on the usage. We always advise our clients to spend a bit more and go for larger images than might be needed for small thumbnails on an insurance website. This then enables these same images can be reused elsewhere on paper-based advertising for example, where a bigger higher resolution/larger image is required.
It is true that because RF images are not licensed exclusively to the purchaser there is the risk that an identical image is being used by a competitor and we always stress this scenario to our clients when advising on types of image licensing. If budget and usage is less of a consideration than exclusivity, then of course rights-managed images win-hands down as they are only used by one client in any particular time period.
So to reduce the risk purchasing RF images that have been seen on insurance websites, brohures and other advertising spaces many times before we use image libraries like Getty Images. Their RF images are more expensive than micro-stock providers such as istockphoto.com but for this reason they tend not to over-purchased and used in 100’s if not 1000’s of designs. In this way we balance cost against non-exclusivity when selecting and purchasing imagery for our client’s websites.
