Model and property releases for stock images

A release is a legal document between you and the model or property owner in your image.

You’re free to use your own form or you can use our sample release forms (you can download our Model release form and our Property release form) but you need to be confident the form you use is legally binding and protects you.

You need to keep your signed releases safe, as they may need to be referenced by a customer or lawyer in the future.

We don’t need you to upload your releases, all you need to do is annotate your images in the image manager to say that you have one available. We’ll get in touch to ask you for a copy if a customer or lawyer requests to see it.

Don’t worry, if you don’t have a release, we can still sell your images for editorial uses. If you’re sure the image can only be used editorially, you can select the ‘sell for editorial only’ button in the optional tab while annotating your images in Alamy Image Manager.

We sell lots of unreleased images to our editorial customers like newspapers, magazines and book publishers because they don’t need a release. However, if you do have the relevant releases your images can be sold to commercial and editorial customers, for more info read our useful blog, The differences between commercial and editorial photography.

When do I need a model release?

If the person in your image can recognise themselves in any way, you’ll need a model release to sell for commercial use. This includes crowd scenes, parts of the body or silhouettes.

In this example, there are two people in the photo, so it would need two releases:

© PhotoAlto / Alamy

In this example there are five people. You can see the faces of three, but there are two more who still count as people, so you’d need five releases:

© Jacob Lund / Alamy

When do I need a property release?

If there’s recognisable property in your image you’ll need a property release in order to sell for commercial use.

Property is not just limited to buildings, it’s anything identifiable that’s copyrighted/trademarked e.g. logos and branded items. This release must be signed by the property or brand owner.

In the example below, you’d need a property release from Pepsi and Coca-Cola and the manufacturer of the truck:

© Hemis / Alamy

In this example, it might be your iPhone but you’d need a signed property release from Apple along with Instagram and Twitter (as the app icons on the iPhone are also trademarked):

© Graham Hughes / Alamy

Remember what we said earlier; don’t worry if you don’t have a property release as all of these images can be sold editorially.

Art in images

Images of artwork/murals/graffiti must be taken with wider context to the image (i.e. as part of a street scene). They should also be marked as available for editorial use only. Images that are solely of artwork could be seen as a copyright or trademark infringement and shouldn’t be uploaded to Alamy as stock photography.