As any photo manipulator and many wallpaper artists can tell you, having access to photographs and third party artworks is crucial to their chosen genre of art. These third party photographs and artworks are often called “Stock Photos”, “Stock Art”, or “Clip Art” and there can be some occasional confusion about what pieces can be used and what pieces cannot be used so I’ll attempt to shed a little light on the situation today.

Your best option is to collect your stock from established (and legal) stock photography websites but often it can be difficult to tell an actual stock website from one which is illegally offering copyrighted material under the pretense that it is stock. Knowing the difference will determine whether or not your photo manipulation gets removed by the C&E staff.

Many legitimate stock websites will offer ‘Royalty Free’ photographs or art for your use. Royalty Free content is usually provided at no charge but typical Terms usually don’t allow you to offer the stock to anyone else or only allow you to provide it to a very limited number of people (like 12 or less).
So while you could submit works containing Royalty Free stock you could not submit the original stock itself to the deviantART stock gallery.

Another term you will often see used on a legitimate stock website is the term ‘Rights Managed’. Rights Managed content typically have conditions attached to the imagery. These conditions might be a required payment, restrictions on how it may be used, a time limit after which you cannot use it any longer, or any combination of these or other restrictions.
Typically when you obtain Rights Managed images you will receive an invoice which details your terms and conditions for use.

A large and established stock photo website will be able to provide you with a large variety of photographs including celebrities- however you will not typically find magazine scans, professional layouts or movie promotional images where these celebrities look their best.

Websites which masquerade as a stock photo website often display screenshots from TV series or movies, magazine scans and other highly dubious content. Be aware that 'Renders' are typically copyrighted material (usually video game related) which has been cut from it's orginal background.
Many of these false stock sites also offer some sort of Disclaimer which would read along the lines of “Images are copyright to their respective owner(s) and no copyright infringement is intended”. If you see such a disclaimer, 'Renders', screenshots, or scans then you should not use the materials being offered on the site.

Submissions which have used things from a fake stock site which is offering materials illegally will be removed as it comes to the attention of the deviantART staff.

Everyone should also be aware that search engines, such as Google, are not a valid source for stock material. Google’s image search always includes the disclaimer “Image may be scaled down and subject to copyright.” which should indicate that their system provides images indiscriminately and that most of what you see is not valid stock material.

Always be certain to follow all the terms and conditions attached to your chosen stock and make sure to provide all the information a curious C&E Administrator might need to confirm that your use of the stock is valid (always include a link back as well).



CREATIVE COMMONS EXPLAINED

With the launch of our new submission page we now offer all our users the ability to place their submissions under a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons has been around for awhile and while many are familiar with the movement many more are not so I’ll attempt to quickly outline what this option entails.

A Creative Commons license allows you to retain the copyright on your works but the specific license lets other artists know that they can use your work in certain ways according to exactly what options you’ve selected for your license.

If you do not wish people to use your work then you should not select any of the Creative Commons Licenses.

If you elect to attach a license to your image you have the following options;

Attribution
All Creative Commons licenses require that the original artist be attributed (or given proper credit). Credit is a requirement and failure to provide it will result in the license terms being violated. Here on deviantART violating this term of the license entitled the original author to have your use of their work removed.

Noncommercial
Simply put this license specifies that whatever you do with the original image you cannot use it for any commercial purpose. Here on deviantART any print or other shop item which uses an image with a noncommercial license will be removed.

No Derivative Works
With this license specification you allow others to use your work but you do not allow them to change it in any fashion- it must remain exactly in the form you provided it. Other than that people are allowed to copy it and pass it around as they see fit. Here on deviantART any works marked with this license which have actually been changed or edited will be removed since any changes at all violate the license.

Share Alike
This license tag allows other people to use, edit and pass along your work but only with the exact same license which you originally placed on it. This means if your work was Noncommercial and Share Alike someone who manipulates your work must also place the same licenses on their new creation- they could not select a No Derivative Works license instead of the Share Alike license for example.

Please be aware that Creative Commons currently offers a much larger selection of licenses and combinations on their own website but we have limited out own built-in options to the four described above in order to limit confusion.

For more information about Creative Commons please visit their Home Page