Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA.

It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 70 million still images and illustrations and more than 30,000 hours of stock film footage. It targets three markets — creative professionals (advertising and graphic design), the media (print and online publishing), and corporate (in-house design, marketing and communication departments).
thumb|235px|The Getty Images website, the company's core image distribution method
Getty has distribution offices around the world and capitalizes on the Internet and CD-ROM collections for distribution. As Getty has acquired other older photo agencies and archives, it has digitised their collections, enabling online distribution. Getty images now operates a large commercial website which allows clients to search and browse for images, purchase usage rights and download images. Costs of images vary according to the chosen resolution and type of rights associated with each image. The company also offers custom photo services for corporate clients.

History

In 1993, Mark Getty and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Klein co-founded Getty Investments LLC, which today is the principal shareholder of Getty Images. Mark Getty is the company's chairman.

In September 1997, Getty Communications, as it was called at the time, merged with PhotoDisc, Inc. to form Getty Images.

In April 2003 Getty Images entered into a partnership with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to market each other's images.

In September 2007, Getty Images adopted a new pricing policy for web image sales that has caused a great deal of controversy among photographers. This policy created a new price package of only $49 for small web images. Controversially, this price was intended to apply to both rights-managed and royalty-free images. In the past, rights-managed images have commanded a price that could easily be 10 times that amount. As a result, a number of international photographers' organizations have complained to Getty. The repricing has occurred at a time when Getty Images' share price and profitability have been under pressure.

The Getty family owns about 20 percent of the company.

Competition

There are dozens of companies selling stock photography competing with Getty; the largest of these is Corbis, a stock image company privately owned by Bill Gates. Prior to 2009, Getty's second-largest competitor had been Jupitermedia Corporation (formerly known as Internet.com); this has since been acquired by Getty and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Getty Images.

By buying out the many family-owned businesses that created the field, Getty and Corbis are in the process of "rolling-up" the stock photo business. In recent months, Getty bought out Digital Vision, iStockphoto, and Stockbyte, and Jupiter bought Comstock and PictureArts.

Acquisitions

thumb|Photodisc's online image sales website (2000)thumb|The Hulton Archive website (2001)
Since its formation, Getty Images has pursued an aggressive programme of acquisition, buying up many privately-owned agencies that had built up the stock photography industry, from small family-run firms to larger agencies. By 1999 it had acquired one of the largest agencies, Tony Stone Images; the online art seller Art.com; the sports photogaphy agency Allsport; the journalistic specialists Liaison Agency; Newsmakers the first digital news photo agency; Online USA, a specialist in celebrity shots; and the Hulton Picture Library, the former archive of the British photojournalistic magazine Picture Post. The Hulton collection was sold by the BBC to Brian Deutsch in 1988, when it was renamed Hulton Deutsch. In 1996, the Hulton collection was sold on once more, this time purchased by Getty Images and renamed Hulton Getty. With the acquisition of the Hulton library, Getty Images took ownership of the rights to some 15 million photographs from the British press archives dating back to the Nineteenth Century. Hulton Getty also included photographs from the Keystone Collection, as well as images by notable photogaphers such as Bert Hardy, Bill Brandt, Weegee and Ernst Haas. (archived on the Web Archive)
Getty also branched out into stock audio and video with the acquisition of EyeWire and Energy Film Library.
In 2000, Getty acquired one of its main competitors, Archive Photos of New York (a division of The Image Bank), for US$183 million. The Archive Photos library was combined with the Hulton Getty collection to form a new subsidiary, Hulton Archive. Archive Photos had been formed in 1990 from the merger of Pictorial Parade (est. 1935) and Frederick Lewis Stock Photos (est. 1938), two well-established US photo agencies. Their collections included archive images from The New York Times, Metronome and George Eastman House, and works by photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Deborah Feingold, Murray Garrett, Nat Fein and John Filo.
Further acquisitions followed, with the purchase in 2004 of image.net for $20 million USD. On February 9, 2006, the microstock photo website iStockphoto was acquired by Getty Images for $50 million USD. In 2007, Getty successfully purchased its largest competitor, MediaVast, for $207 million. The acquisition meant that Getty Images gained control of WireImage (Entertainment, creative, and sports photography), FilmMagic (fashion and red carpet photography), Contour Photos (portrait and studio photography). Getty Images also acquired a host of other subsidiaries including "Master Delegates" who include: Gallo Images in Johannesburg, Touchline Photo in Cape Town, Isifa Image Service in Prague, Laura Ronchi in Italy
On October 23, 2008, Getty Images announced their intention to buy Jupitermedia's online images division, Jupiterimages, for $96 million in cash. The sale went ahead in February 2009; Jupiterimages (including the sites stock.xchng and StockXpert) is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Getty, while Jupitermedia, now trading as WebMediaBrands, continues its internet publishing business which was not sold to Getty Images..

In December 2008, it was announced that Getty Images was acquiring Redferns Music Picture Library, the London-based music photography collection.

Sale of company

In February 2008 it was announced that Getty Images would be acquired by Hellman & Friedman in a transaction valued at an estimated US$2.4 billion.

On July 2, 2008, Getty Images announced the completion of its acquisition by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. Getty Images common stock ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange at the close of the acquisition and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

Copyright enforcement

Getty Images uses a firm called PicScout to scan the web for unauthorized and unlicensed usages of its protected images. Websites that are found to be in violation are sent financial settlements that retroactively licensed the image. However, the settlements also demand damages, which are said to have been incurred against the copyright holder. Thousands of these letters have been sent out, yet according to the Wall Street Journal in October 2005, Getty had not taken any of these potential cases to court. However, recent news reports of lawsuit outcomes would suggest that lawsuits are now being filed..

In 2008, Getty published a notice to its contributors describing how a court decision in New York makes it more difficult to obtain damages for infringement on images that are not registered at the United States Copyright Office. The letter strongly encouraged photographers to register their images.

In 2008, Getty Images lost a lawsuit in Germany. Getty claimed unauthorized usage, but the defendant could prove authorized usage as he had bought a retroactive license directly from the photographer. In 2009, Getty Images settled a lawsuit filed in the United Kingdom's High Court against JA Coles, of Manchester and London. JA Coles admitted to infringing Getty photographer Larry Williams photograph on their website. Despite taking the image down upon notification, JA Coles agreed to pay £1,953.31 in damages and interest, plus Getty Images' legal costs.