Answer 06 of 12

Can you resell nature images from this site? – Cheap Nature Images

The file is never the product; anything you build with it can be. Where print-on-demand and template packs fall.

No to selling the file. Yes to selling work made with it. The distinction is the whole licence.

Not allowed

  • Uploading to another stock library, marketplace or free-image site.
  • Bundling into a download pack, asset archive or resource collection.
  • Including in a template, theme, UI kit, preset or mockup as a shipped asset.
  • Print-on-demand listings where the photograph is the entire product.
  • Building or selling datasets; training models.
  • Passing the original file to a client or colleague so they can start their own unrelated work.

Allowed

  • Posters, prints and merchandise where the picture is part of your design.
  • Book covers, album art, editorial spreads.
  • Packaging at any print run.
  • Websites, apps, campaigns and client deliverables.
  • Signage, exhibitions, interiors, presentations.

Print-on-demand, specifically

This generates more questions than everything else combined, so plainly: listing the photograph as a wall print, canvas or phone case where the image is the product is reselling the file. The customer is buying the picture. A machine putting it on a substrate in between does not change what was sold.

The same photograph as one element of a composition of yours, combined with typography, other images or graphic work, is your piece and you may sell it.

The test: what does your customer think they are paying for? If the honest answer is the photograph, you need a different licence than this one.

Template and theme authors

If you build and sell templates, use the images in your screenshots and demo sites, and do not include the files in what you ship. Your buyer sees the layout with a picture in it and receives a placeholder. That is the standard arrangement and it is fine.

Agencies and freelancers

Buy the licence for the project. Your client may use what you delivered indefinitely. If they want the raw file for future work, buy them their own; it is three dollars and it settles the question permanently.

Volume

Any number of files for a project is fine. Hundreds of files acquired systematically for republication is redistribution under a different name; write first and we will tell you plainly whether the plan is acceptable.

Editorial resale

One case that is neither obviously permitted nor obviously prohibited: selling a publication that contains the image, such as a magazine, a book or a paid newsletter.

That is permitted. The reader is buying the publication, and the photograph is one element inside it. The same logic applies to a paid course, a report or a paywalled article. What is not permitted is offering the image as a separate download to your subscribers, because at that point the file has become the product again.

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