Index Stock Imagery, Inc.: Finding Your Way Through the Stock Lexicon

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October 28, 2005

Finding Your Way Through the Stock Lexicon

Stock Photography Definitions

By Pat Hunt

Whether you are a seasoned Stock pro, or just getting started, it’s often helpful to review the lexicons that describe the stock industry. Business models change and grow, allowing confusion and misunderstanding from season to season. However, a few basic terms are contemporary and widely used, offering a basic underpinning to the business structure you are building. Keep these in your Stock dictionary.

Stock Photography is imagery already produced and offered for licensing with prices based on image usage. Stock images can be photography, illustration, maps, web symbols, fine art, historic documents, graphics, 3D and video. Typical clients are book publishers, magazines, advertising agencies, web designers, graphic artists and corporate creatives.

Editorial Imagery is licensed to illustrate a text article in a magazine or textbook and not for advertising in order to sell a product.

Advertising Imagery promotes a company or named product in order to sell its services. Requires model and property releases.

Corporate Imagery refers to companies licensing imagery directly for the creation of in-house marketing, web or intranet use, annual reports and sales brochures. Sometimes advertising design is done in-house.

Stock Agents will generally market imagery for a percentage of the licensing revenues. The artist retains copyright to the images. (Some images are wholly owned by agents.) Most agents will guide production, edit, scan, keyword and upload to their commercial e-commerce site for the artist.

Portals are similar to an agent, but in most cases all production processes, through the upload of imagery, is handled by the artist/collection for a higher percentage of revenue.

License refers to how stock images are sold. It is a reproduction fee that is granted upon payment, and the image copyright remains with the creator/owner.

Rights Managed (Rights Protected) Imagery is licensed via a pricing model that tracks the client usage in order to retain the right to charge higher prices for restricting that usage to a particular industry. Pricing is determined by negotiating various parameters such as print run, image (file) size, distribution, placement, and image sophistication. For example: “One time, non exclusive, North American, two languages, text book, ¼ page, inside, OR Advertising brochure, ½ page, inside, two million print run, one year, non exclusive, world wide.

Royalty Free Imagery does not restrict rights of usage and can be published in perpetuity by the licensing client. RF is usually offered in three or four resolutions, which limits its usability and determines its price. Average examples: Low resolution price range for 2 MB file - $59 to $129; medium resolution for 10MB to 18MB file - $179 to $289; high resolution for 30MB to 50MB file - $249 to $359; and a super hi res at 70MB+ for $359+. Range of price for a disc of up to 100 images - $399 to $599.

Subscription Stock is usually Royalty Free stock offered in bundles for restricted periods of time at one price rate, allowing numerous downloads. Business models vary with competing companies. A client may chose from a collection of several thousand images for one month, or six months or one year, for $99 to $2400. File resolutions vary depending on the business model. The system works for designers with strict budgets that can work with broad subject images only.

Assignment Stock offers the advertising client a way to secure a custom image on a restricted budget. That budget may be too low for assignment and high enough for stock, however, that stock may not be available on the market. An assignment stock company will arrange to produce that image at their expense and license it for a stock price (minimum $1000), then retain the rights to remarket the image in selected stock outlets (agencies).

SoHo is an acronym standing for Small Office, Home Office. It usually refers to low-resolution image files offered to small businesses at a lower rate. They can be RF or RM.

Consumer Sales is a client term that usually refers to the sale of images for use in post cards, posters, cell phone wallpaper, and products meant for the non-commercial public.

Foreign Sales describes many US agents who have foreign agent affiliates or wholly owned offices that market and license imagery for a specified revenue percentage in their territory.

Third Party is a term that usually refers to sales/licenses handled by a domestic subagent or foreign agent affiliate, resulting in further apportioning of revenue percentages.

Bulk Rate offers a negotiated discount price for images sold in volume, or package deals of multi-use licenses for one price.

OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. The term is usually used in connection with piggybacking a product onto another company’s product to make a packaged deal more inviting. Example: Adding a package of imagery onto a software product or adding imagery to mass mailers for direct marketing to consumers.

Exclusivity Arrangements allow for a limitation on the representation of an image for licensing or on the purchase of a license for a specific industry.

Commission Statements represent artist’s revenue. Some agents/portals send monthly, quarterly or six month statements and some are available in live time on the web site. They usually offer image identification, gross amount of sales, the artist’s percentage of revenue, type of publication or usage and industry to which it is licensed.

E-commerce refers to how most stock imagery is now sold/licensed on a fully enabled website, offering such advantages as lightboxes, varied resolutions, keywording, shopping cart pricing, high resolution download and invoice tracking.

Copyright is a legal concept representing the original expression of a creative process, and restricts rights of reproduction and distribution to the original artist.

Model/property releases are signed documents giving consent to use a likeness of that person or property for a commercial purpose, usually representing an entity or product to be sold.

Trademark refers to a legal registration with a governmental agency to assure exclusivity. Some properties and products are trademarked and cannot be published photographically without permission.

Dimensions are the height and width in inches or centimeters that govern output size for a digital stock photograph.

DPI stands for dots per inch. It measures the resolution or number of pixels in a digital stock photo by the inch, horizontally and vertically.

Resolution is a measure of output capability expressed in dpi and is used in connection with file size for print usage.

Submission guidelines offer strict parameters for sending images to the agent/portal for review, editing and upload/storage. Each company will offer guidelines for film or digital production, including size, resolution, captioning, keywording, copyright, submission volume and delivery media.

The most common broad image categories:

Animals
Architecture
Backgrounds
Fine Art
History
News
Business
Concepts
Food
Health & Beauty
Industry
Lifestyle
Nature
Objects
Sports
High Tech
Travel