DoctorC - 9:52 pm on Aug 22, 2011 (gmt 0)

I hear what you are saying. You need to do that for logos anyway because you can't use stock art for that. But so many people grab a compass or binoculars or whatever and then they get caught with a stolen image (maybe they did not know that the designer took it). I don't want people to get into trouble. Some deserve it for sure!

Even if your corporate image design costs $500.00, it is still cheaper than Rights Managed artwork. In terms of the copyright, sometimes the artist keeps it, you need to get that in writing when you do the contract with the artist and you need to keep that contract. I am mostly buying images used in presentations and they are cheap enough, while saving me hundreds of hours of time each year.

You shoud keep ALL of your cntracts, licenses for software and image purchase documentation in folders. We now have a binder for all of the license agreements and then a copy of the purchase log for the images. So if you use a stock image or micro-image gallery, you just print-out the summary pages of what you have purchased and keep one copy of the master license agreement. We also keep the original images on disk with the original item number and the name of the source that we got them from in the image file name. I don't see an issue with keeping that forever, it is no different than keeping my articles of incorporation, my marriage license, my passport, Etc. in a file system.

However, I use a lot of images for my projects. I suppose that magazines and related media companies need to be very organizd about this and store the licensure by Issue / Volume Number / Date to keep it accessible.