Editorial or commercial use : the distinction that gets expensive
, Nom Prénom
Every photo in this catalogue carries a maximum-licence marker: commercial or editorial. That is not a pricing decision, it is a mechanical consequence of the clearances obtained when the picture was taken.
Two separate layers of rights
A photograph involves at least two layers of rights.
Copyright belongs to the photographer. It is what permits or forbids copying, distributing and modifying the image. On this site it is held by a single author, which simplifies the chain considerably.
Personality rights belong to the people depicted, and sometimes to the owners of identifiable property. They cannot be settled by paying the photographer: they require a written release from the person concerned, with a defined scope.
An image can therefore be entirely clear on copyright and still be unusable in advertising because the second layer is missing.
What triggers the editorial marker
In our catalogue the rule is applied automatically at build time, and it is deliberately strict:
- a person is identifiable and no signed release was obtained → editorial;
- the location or property required a shooting permit and it was not granted → editorial;
- in every other case → commercial.
The rule is not applied by hand. If a record says “commercial” while the conditions above require “editorial”, the build fails and the site does not publish. This is a legal safeguard, not a developer convenience: a typing mistake must never be able to produce a page that promises rights which do not exist.
What you can do with an editorial image
You can use it to illustrate informational content: a news article, an unsponsored blog post, a documentary feature, teaching material, a public-interest publication.
You cannot use it to sell. In concrete terms that excludes: the home page of a commercial site, an advertisement, a product brochure, packaging, a sponsored banner, a brand post on social media.
The edge case that catches everyone
The company blog post. A substantive piece published on an agency’s site, with no offer being pushed, is editorial. The same piece ending in a “discover our services” box moves into commercial territory, because the image is then contributing to promoting a service.
When in doubt, the useful question is not “is this an article?” but “is the image helping sell something?”. If the answer is yes, you need a commercial image. The catalogue holds more than enough of them for this never to be an obstacle: the editorial marker applies to a small minority of records, and it is displayed on the thumbnail before you even open the page.