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The archive was licensed. Nobody asked the people who made it.

Getty sued. Shutterstock signed. Then, in January 2025, they announced they were merging with each other.

Read the piece — Photographers Found Out from a Press Release

Close-up of an adult photographer's hands holding a Fujifilm X100VI, the body worn at the strap lugs, against a dark workbench surface

Shutterstock licensed the library to the model developers and put a share into a contributor fund. Getty sued Stability AI in two jurisdictions and then built a generator of its own on rights it already held. Both are defensible positions. Neither was a negotiation with the people in the files.

It is worth being precise about what actually changed, because the loud version of this story is wrong in both directions.

The agreement, as most contributors met it: a company statement about a library they are in.Photo: Getty Images logo · Wikimedia Commons

The Copyright Office never wavered. Zarya of the Dawn was registered for its text and its arrangement; the generated images were refused. A machine’s output is not authored, whatever prompt produced it. That is not a temporary position awaiting better technology.

Hands holding a Leica Summicron-M 66 f/2 camera lens outdoors — Leica wrote Content Credentials into the file at capture. Nikon, Sony and Canon are on the same standard.Photo: leica-camera.com

So provenance became the camera makers’ problem, and they took it. The body signs the frame; the signature travels with it. How the credential actually works.

A picture desk with two monitors: one showing a stock library browser, the other a legal document, adult hands at the keyboard, overhead office light — A picture desk, where the question of who signed what stops being theoretical.Photo: Thirdman / Pexels

Supported by

Makers and services our editorial keeps a viewfinder on.

Three things that are true, and checkable

A hand holds a Fujifilm X100V camera, showing its fixed lens and leather strap

Fujifilm announced the X100VI in February 2024 and could not build them fast enough.

A fixed lens and no zoom, wanted precisely because it is not a phone.

Screenshot of darktable's lighttable module showing a grid of thumbnail photos and editing panels

Adobe went subscription in 2013 and made the case for everyone else.

Capture One, DxO, darktable and RawTherapee all grew into the space it left.

Rear element and mount contacts of a Sigma Art prime lens, resting on a grey cloth, the L-mount bayonet ring in sharp focus

Nikon licensed the Z mount to third parties. Canon kept RF shut, then didn’t.

Sigma, Panasonic and Leica had already shared the L-mount since 2018.

A file is now a legal object as well as a picture. The camera makers worked that out before the agencies did.

There are three parts to this site: the bodies people are actually buying, the software the file passes through, and the paperwork that decides what it is worth.

A row of mirrorless camera bodies on a bench — Nikon Z8, Sony a7R V, Fujifilm X-T5 — shot from above, lens mounts facing up

Cameras

The hardware as it stands — mirrorless bodies, fixed-lens compacts, film, and the lens market around them.

Twelve pieces →

A desktop monitor showing a Capture One raw-processing session with a histogram open and a full-resolution landscape file on the editing canvas, adult hands on the keyboard

Software

Raw processing, file formats, and the software market that Adobe's subscription model reshaped.

Seven pieces →

A picture desk with two monitors: one showing a stock library browser, the other a legal document, adult hands at the keyboard, overhead office light

The Trade

Licensing, rights, content credentials, stock economics, and the paperwork that decides what a frame is worth.

Seven pieces →

Also supporting

From the archive

All 26 pieces →

Fujifilm Announced the X100VI and Could Not Build Them Fast EnoughCameras

Forty Megapixels in a Body That Fits a Jacket PocketCameras

Adobe Went Subscription in 2013 and Made the Case for Everyone ElseSoftware

Capture One Grew Into the Space Adobe LeftSoftware

Photographers Found Out from a Press ReleaseThe Trade

What the Copyright Office Actually Said, and What People Think It SaidThe Trade