Published on 4 June 2017 | Updated on 16 January 2020
Founded in 1999, with its database of over 165 million images, Alamy is one of the leading stock photo agencies on the market.
Besides Royalty Free License, Alamy offers Rights Managed Licence, Rights Managed – Exclusive Licence and Novel Use Licence. Their commission is very high as they split each sale 50/50* if you are exclusive with them. Even though Alamy has the largest online collection of images and video clips, they are still growing. They have recently opened new offices in the US and India, as well as sales teams in Germany and Australia.
* Update as of 21st February 2019 – Alamy changed their commission structure to 40% for non-exclusive contributors – read our announcement.
How To Join Alamy?
To become Alamy’s contributor you need to sign up for a free account and send in 3 images of any subject for review. All 3 images must pass Alamy’s Quality Control. Once accepted, you can send as many files as you like. The Quality Control Team will only check a sample images in subsequent submissions. If they pass the QC, the whole bunch will be accepted.
You can submit images and illustrations (as .jpg or .eps vector files), as well as video clips. Images must be over 6 MP, so a good quality DLSR is a must. Here is all you need to know on how to prepare and submit images for QC.
How Alamy’s Quality Control Works (2017 update)
With the release of the new Alamy Image Manager they made some changes to the way Quality Control (QC) works.
They introduced a three star ranking system that is based on your QC history and how often you pass or fail QC. The more stars you have the more quickly they review your submissions.
- 3 stars – your new submissions will be reviewed as quickly as possible.
- 2 stars – check your images in detail to make sure you qualify for that extra star.
- 1 star – you fail QC a lot and it takes longer to look at your work. If you fail QC, your account will be frozen for 10 days before you can upload images again. For more information on passing QC click here.
It’s not that difficult to get 3 stars. All you need to do is to read and understand Alamy contributor guidelines.
You can see your QC rank in your ‘Alamy dashboard’:
Do Not Sharpen
You should avoid sharpening your images before you submit or at the very most only apply a small amount. You can upload images in your preferred colour space, Alamy convert to sRGB when you upload. This policy is in place to retain the original quality of images so they may be edited by buyers with the minimum possible quality loss. In our opinion this is a very good approach but only possible because your work is offered for sale in its original size (without any resizing as done by some microstock agencies).
Stock Photo Buyers: Save on Hi-res Images
StockPhotoAdviser along with Alamy the world’s largest online photo library, works together to provide our readers with coupon codes and exclusive offers. We have ongoing and time-limited Coupon Codes with at least 10% discount on all high resolution images.
Our Limited-Time Deal: 15% OFF All Images
For more details, check Alamy Coupon Codes and Special Offers.
Our verdict
Due to Alamy’s specific business model, various types of licences and pricing being completely different to what other stock photo agencies offer, do not expect great sales in terms of quantity, but once you sell something, you will be very pleased with what you get in reward.
Alamy Details
| Website | alamy.com |
| Location | Abingdon, Oxon, UK (with offices in US, Canada, Australia, Germany, India and many local distributors) |
| How to apply | Sign up for your free account and start submitting your stock photos |
| Image size | Minimum 6.0 MP (Uncompressed file sizes of more than 17MB) |
| Media accepted | Photo, Illustration (in .jpg and .eps vector format), Video |
| Licenses | Royalty Free Licence, Rights Managed Licence, Rights Managed – Exclusive Licence and Novel Use Licence |
| Minimum payout | $50 |
| Payment methods | PayPal, Skrill, transfer to your bank account |
| Upload methods | Webform |
| IPTC Data support | Yes |
| More details | Details of Contributor Royalties, Image/ Credit/ Subscription Prices, Referral Programs and Exclusivity Rates can be found in our Comparisons |
| Download Releases | Adult Model Release Property Release |
