A plain-English licence that lets a client, a publication or a brand use your photos while you keep the copyright. Choose personal, editorial or commercial use, set how long, where and whether it's exclusive, then download a PDF to sign.
Template, not legal advice. Laws differ by country and state — have it checked by a lawyer where you work before you rely on it.
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Exclusivity
Leave a field empty to print a blank line and fill it in by hand.
________________ (________________) owns the copyright in the images below and grants ________________ (________________) a licence to use them as this document sets out. The images: ________________.
Personal, non-commercial use only: printing the images for the home and as gifts, displaying them, and sharing them with family and friends and on personal social media accounts. The licence does not cover selling the images, using them to promote a business, product or service, entering them in competitions, or publishing them in print or online media.
The licence starts on ________________ and lasts for ________________. Territory: ________________.
This licence is non-exclusive: the photographer may license the same images to other people, for any use.
The licence fee is ________________. The licence takes effect once the fee has been paid in full.
When the images are shared online, the licensee credits them as “________________” where the platform allows it.
The licensee may crop and resize the images to print or share them. Filters, retouching or other changes to how they look, and removing a watermark or credit, need the photographer's permission.
The licensee may not use the images, or let them be used, to train, fine-tune or test an artificial intelligence model, or as input to generate new images, without the photographer's written permission.
Copyright stays with ________________; this licence does not transfer it. Any use not listed here, or after the licence ends, needs the photographer's written permission.
The licensee may not sell, transfer or sublicense the images or this licence to anyone else.
If the licensee uses the images outside this licence, or the fee is not paid, the photographer may end the licence by writing to the licensee. When it ends, for any reason, no new use may start; prints already made may be kept.
This licence is governed by the law of ________________. It is the whole agreement between the parties about these images; changes must be in writing and agreed by both.
Signature lines for licensee and photographer are added at the end.
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Write posts that bring in clients
Licensing your work is easier when buyers already know it: upload a photo to Spotlight's Get clients mode and CAPTD writes posts for every platform that show what you shoot and how to hire or license from you.
Get clients is a mode of the Spotlight workspace on CAPTD's paid plans — see pricing.
Open Get clientsBuilds a licence for a set of your images: who may use them, for what, from when and for how long, where, whether the licence is exclusive, the fee and the credit line. Personal, editorial and commercial versions each set their own limits on use, editing, releases and passing the images on. Copyright stays with you in all three.
The clause list is the licence: what you see, numbered in order, is what the PDF and copied text contain. Signature lines for the licensee and the photographer go at the end.
A photo licence is written permission from the copyright owner, usually the photographer, for someone else to use images in agreed ways. The photographer keeps the copyright; the licensee gets the right to use the images for the purpose, period and territory the licence sets out.
Personal licences cover a client's own prints and social media. Editorial licences cover news, features and commentary in a publication. Commercial licences cover anything that promotes a business, product or service: websites, adverts, brochures, packaging.
A written licence is how you get paid for the use, not just the shoot. It sets the price against what the images are actually used for, stops them spreading to uses nobody paid for, and gives you something to point to if they turn up in an advert you never agreed to.