Image licensing is the permission, usually set out in written terms, that lets you use a photograph, illustration or graphic someone else created. The licence states where you may use the image, for how long, in what form and whether you must credit the creator. Any use outside those terms is unlicensed, even if you paid for the image.
How image licensing works
In the UK, a photograph or illustration is protected by copyright from the moment it is made, under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Nothing has to be registered and no © symbol is needed. The creator, or whoever now owns the rights, decides who may copy and publish the work, and a licence is how that permission is granted.
These are the licence types you will meet when building a website or running ads:
- Royalty-free You pay once, or through a subscription, and can reuse the image within the library’s terms. It is not the same as free, and it is not unlimited. Standard royalty-free terms often cap print runs and exclude items made for resale, such as printed mugs or posters.
- Rights-managed Priced for a set use, territory and period. An image licensed for a 2025 brochure is not licensed for your 2026 website.
- Creative Commons Free licences with conditions attached. CC BY requires a credit. The NC variants exclude commercial use, which rules out most business websites, and the ND variants forbid adapted versions.
- Editorial use only For news and commentary. These images often show people, brands or events without signed releases, so they cannot appear on a sales page or in an ad.
- Commissioned work You pay a photographer for a shoot. Unless the contract assigns copyright to you, the photographer normally keeps it and licenses you the uses you agreed.
Model and property releases sit alongside the licence. If a stock photo shows a recognisable person, the release is what allows commercial use, and many libraries forbid placing models next to sensitive subjects such as illness, debt or addiction.
Why it matters
Photo agencies and image-tracking firms scan the web with reverse image search and write to businesses using pictures they have no record of licensing. Small UK firms receive these letters regularly, often for an image a former web designer added years earlier. Not knowing the picture was protected rarely helps, because a business is expected to check before publishing.
Disputes that do not settle can be taken to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, whose small claims track deals with lower-value copyright claims without the cost of full litigation. Most cases settle before then, but a back-dated fee for a single image can cost more than a year of stock subscription would have.
There is an SEO side too. A generic stock photo tells neither Google nor a visitor anything that a thousand other pages do not already show. Original photos of your premises, people and finished work help image SEO, can appear in image results and on your Google Business Profile, and build more trust than a staged handshake.
Common mistakes
- Taking pictures from Google Images, Pinterest or a competitor’s site on the belief that anything online is free to use.
- Assuming the agency that built your site licensed its images, without ever seeing the paperwork.
- Using an editorial-only image in an ad, a promotional social post or on a service page.
- Reposting a customer’s or creator’s photo without written permission for that use. A tag is not a licence; agree usage rights in writing first.
- Letting a stock subscription lapse without checking whether images downloaded during it stay licensed.
- Paying a claim letter the day it arrives, or ignoring it, instead of checking what evidence you hold.
How to act on it
Start with an inventory. List every image in your media library with its source, licence type, date and where the proof lives: an invoice, a download history or a contract. Replace or license anything without a known source now, before a letter arrives.
Keep the evidence with the image. A spreadsheet keyed by filename is enough for most small businesses. When you commission photography, ask for a contract that names every use you need, including the website, paid ads and social media, with no end date.
If a claim arrives, check whether the image really belongs to the sender, whether you already hold a licence, and whether the sum resembles a normal licence fee. Take legal advice if the amount is significant.
Where an image carries meaning, prefer an original one and give it useful alt text. Choosing, sourcing and describing images properly is part of the content SEO work I do with UK businesses.