FAQ

1. How much do your photos cost?

Our licenses are all rights-managed, so the price depends on how you want to use the photo. And a few photos may cost more or less than others due to uniqueness or quality. To get a specific quote, please find a photo you like and click the "Get License Quote" button.

2. Do you offer discounts for non-profits?

No, Art History Images does not provide free licenses or discounts based on non-profit status alone. Here's why.

First, non-profit organizations promote a wide variety of causes, some of which are simply charitable but many of which are religious or political. Our photographers come from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints, so just because an organization has a non-profit tax status does not mean they wish to support it by giving up a portion of their fees.

Secondly, non-profit status does not in itself indicate a lack of resources to purchase quality supplies for its projects, including stock images. Many non-profit organizations are run on a tight budget by volunteers, but others are multimillion-dollar organizations that can afford the very best employees, equipment and supplies their donors' money can buy. So, again, non-profit status alone does not indicate that a discount is merited.

However, if your non-profit is an educational institution or place of worship and the photos are used internally, it is likely eligible for our Educational license, and all academic institutions qualify for our Institutional Database license.

For all other uses, please choose the appropriate category under Licensing Options on any photo page. Our licensing fees are reasonable and based on usage, so they should be affordable for most non-profit organizations.

3. Are your photos 300 DPI?

Images created in digital cameras do not have a DPI. DPI stands for "dots per inch" and digital images have only dots. A digital image doesn't have inches until it is displayed on a physical screen or printed on physical paper. At that point, the dots per inch can vary widely, depending on the screen resolution or the setting chosen on the printer.

The only time digital images can be said to have a DPI is when they were created by scanning a print or slide, which was common practice before the advent of digital cameras. In this case, DPI represents the quality setting the scanner used to create the digital image. And when licensing an image that was scanned, it is important to be sure the quality setting used by the scanner was high enough, so that the photo will look good when printed again. Therefore publishers got in the habit of requesting "300dpi images". However, all of the photos on Art History Images were created by digital cameras (they were never scanned), so this measurement does not apply.

Unfortunately, confusion on this issue is perpetuated by many digital cameras, which embed a default DPI in the EXIF data for "convenience" - to help estimate the size the photo will be when displayed on a monitor or printed. Often this DPI is rather low, such as 72dpi (typical for screen display), and this can understandably alarm publishers who aren't aware of the above. Please be assured that this EXIF tag is meaningless and nothing more than a tag. Photographers could change that tag in Photoshop, but it would not change the image itself one bit, so it is a waste of time to do so.

Digital image quality is properly measured not in DPI but in resolution, or number of pixels. This is most commonly given as width in pixels by height in pixels, for example, 4000 x 2658px. The resolution of our photos is displayed on each photo page. This is the number you need to ensure is high enough for your intended print size and print quality. (Please see #4 below for more details.)

For more information on this subject, please see the following resources:

All About Digital Photos - The Myth of DPI (an especially clear explanation)
Wikipedia - DPI or PPI in digital image files
Johnny Pixel - DPI Confusion: Scaling Down the Myth
Better Digital Photography - DPI (Dots per inch) explained (includes an explanation of why some digital cameras label images as 72dpi)

4. How do I ensure a digital photo will provide sufficient quality and size when printed?

Start by checking the "Digital size" or "Resolution" listed with the photo you want (on this or any other photo website), which will be given in pixels. Generally, bigger is better, but you may not need as large a resolution as you think - the smaller the print will be, the smaller the digital image can be with no loss in quality.

How many inches you get out of a digital image depends on the DPI you choose when printing. So in order to judge whether a digital image is large enough, you need to know: (1) your desired DPI and (2) your desired print size. Once you have these numbers, use this formula: pixels/dpi = inches.

For example, if you license a 4000 x 2658 pixel photo, you can set your printer to 300dpi and create a print up to 13.3 x 18.9 inches with no loss in quality. Or you could set the quality a little lower to 240dpi, and get a larger print: 16.7 x 11.1 inches. And so on. The higher the dpi, the smaller the print, and vice versa. Large murals will need to use a very small DPI, unless you can find a digital image with extremely high resolution.

5. Any other questions?

Please contact us.

Last updated: March 2, 2013