To understand what Royalty Free means, It’s important to understand that there is a basic difference between a ‘photo’ and a ‘licence to use a photo’. ‘Royalty Free’ refers to the license that allows you to use a photo multiple times. Unless the license is offered for free, you have to purchase it.
Once you have paid for the Royalty Free license, you are allowed to use the image multiple times for a wide variety of purposes without having to pay each time you use it. So, ‘Royalty free’ means ‘free from royalties’ – in other words, once you have purchased the license, you don’t have to pay each time the image is used.
Although a Royalty Free license allows multiple use of an image (within certain restrictions), since you have to pay to acquire the license – it’s not free. While purchasing a royalty free license allows you free use of the image…. It only deals with ‘use’ of the image. The image copyright still belongs to the photographer who created the photo.
By default, royalty free licenses are not exclusive. So, a photographer can sell as many royalty free licenses for an image as he likes.
