
While it gives downloaders the right to "copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash", the Unsplash terms of service prohibit selling unaltered copies, including selling the photos as prints or printed on physical goods. The Unsplash license prevents users from using photos from Unsplash in a similar or competing service. Unsplash photos are covered by the Unsplash license. 200,000 other images can only be identified by hand. Licensing Īn example of a CC0 image added before the license change. Unsplash will continue to operate as a standalone brand and division of Getty Images with Cho in charge. In March 2021, Unsplash was acquired by Getty Images for an undisclosed sum. Due to the volume of photo submissions, the site employed an editorial team and "curators" picked from the Unsplash community, including Guy Kawasaki, Nas, Khoi Vinh, Amanda Hesser and Om Malik. Ĭho supplied the first batch of photos to Unsplash, which then received contributions from amateur and professional photographers. Unsplash received more than 50,000 visits on its first day. Afterwards, Cho posted the outtakes from his company photoshoot on Tumblr, inviting people to use them as they saw fit. While creating a new homepage for his company Crew, Cho was unable to find a suitable stock photo and hired a photographer instead.

Initially a pioneer of the copyright-free photography model, Unsplash was created in 2013 by Montreal-based entrepreneur Mikael Cho. Unsplash has been cited as one of the world's leading photography websites by Forbes, Design Hub, CNET, Medium and The Next Web.

The website claims over 265,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 16 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 3.48 million photos. Since 2021, it has been owned by Getty Images. Unsplash is a website dedicated to proprietary stock photography.
