Helping Creators Get Paid Fairly

Splash represents photographers, agencies, and contributors whose work is used across websites, social platforms, blogs, publications, and commercial pages. When images are used without the right licence, we try to resolve that fairly and simply.

Why this matters

Great images do not just appear out of nowhere. Behind every photograph is a person, a camera, time, travel, skill, editing, equipment, risk, and often years of experience.

Licensing is how that work is funded. It allows contributors to keep creating, covering events, capturing moments, and supplying the images that publishers, brands, blogs, and businesses rely on every day.

What is retrospective licensing?

Sometimes an image is used before the correct licence has been arranged. That can happen for lots of reasons: a website designer may have supplied it, it may have come from a template, it may have been found through a search engine, or someone may simply have assumed it was free to use.

Retrospective licensing is a practical way to deal with that past use. Instead of starting with a heavy-handed approach, Splash gives users an opportunity to regularise the use by paying an appropriate fee for the period the image was used without permission.

Our aim is not to catch people out

We understand that not every unlicensed use is deliberate. Many people are surprised to learn that an image found online, or provided by a third party, may still need a licence.

Our goal is to make the situation clear, explain why the image is protected, and provide a route to resolve the matter without unnecessary escalation.

Why removing the image is not always enough

Taking an image down may stop future use, but it does not address the period when the image was already published. If the image was visible on a website, social account, campaign, article, or other public page, that use may still need to be licensed.

A retrospective licence helps resolve that earlier use and ensures the contributor is properly recognised and remunerated.

How the process works

What the fee supports

Licence fees help support the people and organisations involved in creating, managing, distributing, protecting, and archiving professional images.

That includes photographers, contributors, editors, agencies, technology providers, and the systems needed to make sure creative work is not simply copied and used without permission.

We want to keep it straightforward

If you have received a notice, the simplest next step is to read it carefully and respond. If you believe you already had a licence, tell us. If you think the image was supplied by someone else, you can speak to them. If you accept that no licence was in place, the payment route is designed to bring the matter to a close.

The earlier you engage with the process, the easier it usually is to resolve.

A note on fairness

We know copyright can feel confusing, especially online. But we also know that creative professionals deserve to be paid when their work is used.

Splash's retrospective licensing process is intended to balance those two realities: helping users resolve past use while supporting the contributors whose work made the image possible in the first place.