RF and RM Editorial

[Wawa]

I know the "RF vs RM" subject has been beaten to death for more experienced contributors but I'm still a little shaky when it comes to submitting RF/RM Editorial images to Alamy and other agencies ( micros and non-micros). 

If I submit an image of a non-identifiable person (faceless) to Alamy without a release then Alamy will require it be RM editorial.  The same image submitted to a microstock agency might be "RF editorial" or just "RF".  So wouldn't that cause a conflict according to the Alamy contract?   I posted a similar topic on one of the microstock forums and the contributor that goes by name of "Brasilnut" stated:  "Alamy now allows the option to license images as RF editorial."  How does Alamy define "RF editorial"?   I couldn't find it going over the agreement/contract info.  The last couple days I've been reading so many of the different requirements for different agencies that I'm starting to confuse myself even more.  I just don't want to get screwed with Alamy or any other agency.  So for the people who submit to both Alamy and microstocks how do you deal with this?  Thanks.

[Wawa]

I haven't contributed any photos in a while but I just started going over other peoples photos here at Alamy and I noticed that there are several photos of people without model releases that are labeled "RF".  I thought that any photo of a person, even if it just shows only part of the human body, that didn't have a model release had to be "RM'.  Is this what Brasilnut means when he says " Alamy now allows the option to license images as RF editorial."? 

Still, I can't wrap my head around the idea of "RF Editorial".  Editorial means there are certain restrictions and Royalty Free means there aren't -  right?  Where am I wrong?  Can someone break it down for me?  Thanks again.

[Martin Carlsson]

@Brasilnut is absolutely right. RF-Editorial is in short a new option for those instances where you before didn't have the required releases to make it RF, thus the only option was RM. There has been a few interesting discussions about it - see links below. So the case is still that images without the appropriate releases can't be sold for commercial usage, but can now be sold as "RF Editorial" (as well as traditional RM). An effort to or the result of pressure/trend to make the licensing process simpler and quicker for buyers, industry insight/reports/feedback give strong indications that this is increasingly where we're heading.

 

Alamy's view on RF Editorial (source: http://www.alamy.com/blog/licensing-stock-images-with-alamy)

 

"RF stands for Royalty Free. Customers pay a one–off fee to use the image with no restrictions on how they use it, or how long they use it for. RF images can be used across multiple projects, forever. Our customers are increasingly asking for broader rights so we’d recommend selling your images as RF but the decision is yours. You can choose a different stock photo license for each image you upload, but we suggest not giving the same or very similar looking images different licence types. If images contain people or property they need to have the right releases to be sold for commercial use. If you choose to sell all your images under one license type, you can set a default by clicking the cog button in Alamy Image Manager."

 

There has been quite a lot of discussions on this topic already, here a few select interesting ones.

 

http://discussion.alamy.com/topic/6914-should-we-switch-to-rf-editorial/

 

http://discussion.alamy.com/topic/7249-rf-editorial/

 

http://discussion.alamy.com/topic/8234-submitting-to-alamy-and-other-stock-agencies-rf-images/

 

More details Alamy's licensing terms can be found here http://www.alamy.com/terms/uk.asp

[Brasilnut]

Quote

Brasilnut" stated:  "Alamy now allows the option to license images as RF editorial."  How does Alamy define "RF editorial"? 

 

Bienvenido to Alamy, Wawa. 

 

This nut sure gets around!

 

I never quite understood why Alamy automatically made unreleased images RM, since it's just confusing. Glad they simplified it. 

 

Quote

Editorial means there are certain restrictions and Royalty Free means there aren't -  right?  Where am I wrong?  Can someone break it down for me?

 

As Martin has pointed out, there's loads of information on this already so I'll be brief. There's 4 different options you can select on here:

 

1. Commercial RF

2. Commercial RM

3. Editorial RF

4. Editorial RM

 

Whether it's RM or RF has nothing to do with whether the image is commercial (promote products and/or services) editorial (non-commercial usage, mainly news and educational-usage)

 

A. RM = limits on terms of usage/area/time. One payment per usage.

B. RF = Fewer limits, broader rights. One-off payment.

 

Lastly, if you're uploading both on here and at Microstock, please keep the licensing type as RF.

 

Hope that helps and good luck on here!

 

Nut