Got a question or having trouble using the site? Then you're in the right place.

Can I amend my personal account details?

Yes. You can amend or update any of your details on your profile page by clicking on ‘My Loop’ in the top navigation bar.

Can I browse the site without being a registered visitor?

Non-registered visitors are assigned ‘guest’ rights to the website where you can still search and browse but are required to either register online or contact Loop directly to buy an image.

What if I forget my Password?

If you forget your password, click on the ‘Forget your Password?’ link below the Log in button. Type in your email address and click ‘Send Email’. An email will be sent to you containing a link to a page where you can enter a new password.

The country I want to license an image in doesn’t appear in the drop down list.

Contact the Loop sales office who will be happy to provide a price for territories not featured in the drop-down.

Can I license an image exclusively?

The short answer is yes, but generally Loop will need to liaise directly with individual photographers regarding the exclusive licensing of one of their images. Again, contact the Loop sales office who will be able to provide you with a prompt answer regarding price and availability.

Can I license a single image in multiple countries at once?

Contact the Loop sales office for multiple territories and/or multiple licenses.

How do I price and download multiple images over a period of time?

Contact the Loop sales office to negotiate rates and arrange delivery of files.

What if I want tiff originals for my project in a particular size?

Loop are happy to provide tiff originals via ftp or to non-destructively interpolate files to a client’s specification.

How do I add an image to a lightbox?

When you view images via a search, you will see a lightbox icon that sits below each image. Click the icon to add the image to your lightbox. If you are logged in, you will be prompted to pick a lightbox to place the image into, or to create a new lightbox, if preferred. If not logged in, your image will be stored in a temporary lightbox which can be retrieved by logging in or registering on the Loop site. The lightbox can then be edited or shared if required.

You can have an unlimited number of lightboxes to organize the images that you are interested in.

How do I view the contents of my lightbox?

Lightboxes are viewable from your My Loop page.

A lightbox has the following properties:

• It contains images and the facility to rate images.
• The Details heading contains information the lightbox owner can fill in regarding the client, the project and description of the chosen image.
• The Comments heading allows information to be written about a particular image.
• The Share tab allows the user to send the lightbox to another registered Loop user.

Click on the name of the lightbox to edit it. You can click the description fields to edit them in place as well.

How do I purchase items in my lightbox?

Click the preview image from within the lightbox to reveal a larger version of the same picture. To buy, simply price the image by clicking the green Buy/License button and proceed through the pricing matrix. Once this has been completed and a price has been calculated, the user is given the option to Buy It Now or to Cancel. Clicking the Buy It Now button will take the user through the buying gateway, and when complete, give access to a hi-res download of the chosen image via the my account page.

As a guest user of our database, you have access to the full search functionality of our site. However, you are not able to store or share lightboxes, or order and download images online. You can though, add images to your cart without having an account and upon checkout, we will create a free Loop account for you using the e-mail and password that you specify. Don’t worry, we won’t spam you or sell your information to other companies!

If you do register on the site, your lightbox(es) are stored until you decide to remove them. Even if you leave the Loop site, the next time you visit and login, your lightbox will still be there. You can also access all previous orders and see invoice, download and lightbox history.

Registration is free, straight forward and takes only moments. You choose your own unique username and password which will then allow you full access to the rich functionality of the site. To register on the Loop site, click here.

Regular clients are also able to request an upgrade to their logins to allow them to:

• access hi-res files for client approval
• access unwatermarked comp images
• download hi-resolution images via ftp

If you would like to have an upgraded login to allow you to have access to one or more of the above features, please contact us.

If you have any concerns about the security of the information you provide to us, please view our Privacy Policy.

All searches on the Loop site start with typing keywords into the search box. Your initial results will be somewhat broad. To refine the results further, click on the advanced search link underneath the search box. This will allow you to narrow your results using the various image attributes.

Synonyms, tenses and variations

Our search engine automatically searches for any synonyms of your keywords, so if you search for ocean, it will also find images with the keyword sea.

The dictionary can also recognize different forms of words, such as plurals and verb tenses. If you search for boy, you will also find boys, and vice versa. Searching for running will also bring back images that have the keywords run or ran.

However, keywords that match your search terms exactly will be prioritized above synonyms or word variants. So, in your search for ocean, the first images returned will be those that have ocean as a keyword, followed by those tagged with sea. If you searched for sea instead, the sea images would come up first. In both cases, the search results will be exactly the same, but the rankings will be different.

The same goes for different keyword variants. So if you need to find a picture of more than one boy, try searching for boys, and pictures tagged with the plural form will turn up first.

Boolean

Our system supports Boolean operators – so you are welcome to use these in the keyword box to specify your search. For instance:

• Apple Orange or Apple AND Orange will return all images that have both words in their metadata ;
• Apple OR Orange will return images that have either the “Apple” word or the “Orange” word in their metadata. Note that the OR operator must be in capital letters ;
• “black cat” will return images that match the exact phrase “black cat” ;
• Kid OR Child AND Male will return images of boys (the “AND” is optional) ;
• A AND B OR C AND D AND E OR F means “A AND D AND (B OR C OR E OR F)”.

Overview

Rights-managed licenses allow buyers to use images for a specific purpose. For example, if you wanted to use an image for a double page spread in a magazine with a UK circulation of 300,000. All of the imagery on the Loop site is available on a rights-managed basis, so in order to determine the correct price, you need to enter usage information. You can then immediately purchase and take electronic delivery of the image file.

Pricing an image

In order to price a rights-managed image, click the ‘+cart’ icon underneath an image which will reveal a box where you can select a series of parameters to generate a price eg. category, size, duration, etc. The parameters vary relative to the type of usage required.

When the price is presented, you then have the option to purchase it immediately via credit card. Once you’ve accepted a price and entered your billing information, there will be a short wait while the files are prepared for your retrieval. You will receive an e-mail when the files are ready for pick up.

What is a lightbox?

Lightboxes are a great way to collaborate with others when discussing a set of images. They allow you to store images that interest you in a personalised repository on the Loop site. You can add any image to your lightbox, regardless of whether it has been priced for sale. You can also create a comment on your lightbox, if for example, you are researching images for a project and also share the lightbox with clients and colleagues, by providing an email address.

Although you can add images to a lightbox without being logged into Loop, having a free account allows you to save and share the lightbox. You can create a free Loop account here.

How do I add an image to a lightbox?

When you view images via a search or through the galleries, you will see a +lightbox icon that sits below each image. Click the icon to add the image to your lightbox. If you are logged in, you will be prompted to pick a lightbox to place the image into, or to create a new lightbox, if preferred. If not logged in, your image will be stored in a temporary lightbox which can be retrieved by logging in or registering on the Loop site. The lightbox can then be edited or shared if required.

You can have an unlimited number of lightboxes to organize the images that you are interested in.

How do I view the contents of my lightbox?

Click the lightboxes tab in the page header to view a list of your lightboxes. There are two tabs to show lightboxes that you’ve created, and lightboxes that have been shared with you. Click on a lightbox name to view its contents.

A lightbox has the following properties:

• It contains images and the facility to rate images.
• The Details heading contains information the lightbox owner can fill in regarding the client, the project and description of the chosen image.
• The Comments heading allows information to be written about a particular image.
• The Share tab allows the user to send the lightbox to another registered Loop user.

Click on the name of the lightbox to edit it. You can click the description fields to edit them in place as well.

How do I purchase items in my lightbox?

Click the preview image from within the lightbox to reveal a larger version of the same picture. To buy, simply price the image by clicking the green Buy/License button and proceed through the pricing matrix. Once this has been completed and a price has been calculated, the user is given the option to Buy It Now or to Cancel. Clicking the Buy It Now button will take the user through the buying gateway, and when complete, give access to a hi-res download of the chosen image via the “My account” page.

Overview

Images are available in hi-res jpeg format as electronic downloads from the Loop site. Alternatively, the tiff originals are available offline as 50MB files for both editorial and commercial use. Contact Loop if tiff originals are required.

Downloading files electronically

After pricing an image and passing through the payment gateway, there will be a short wait while payment is approved and the image file is prepared for download. The user will then receive notification that files are available for download along with details of the image license, plus a link to the My Downloads section of the Loop site. The email also contains a link to the My Purchases area of the site where the user can see the status of any previous purchase or impending payment made on the site.

Each image is a separate download and is delivered as a ZIP file. The ZIP file includes:

• the image file as a hi-res jpeg
• XMP sidecar with usage rights
• text file with usage rights

The usage rights are also embedded into the image file. The usage rights will indicate what the license allows and who the licensee is. For example:

Usage rights agreed upon for this image are: United Kingdom, Editorial/Publishing, Magazine.Consumer, Double page, Up to 500,000 Licensed to Tom Smith / Smith Design Co.

You can download the images for up to 96 hours. After that point, you need to contact Loop Images if you need to retrieve the file again. Each image needs to be downloaded individually.

Purchase history

All historical purchases for any licensing type can be found on the Loop site under the My Loop link in the top header.

Rights-managed (RM) licensing – a confusing concept and expensive, right?

Wrong! It simply means that an image is priced on how it will be used with factors such as size, media, duration of use and geographic distribution. Indeed, RM offers far greater flexibility with pricing compared to other licensing models because the rate charged depends specifically upon this use.

How many images on that old Royalty-Free (RF) cd do you actually use? For example, you want to use one of our images 1/4 page in a retail magazine in the UK with a readership of 100,000. Great! Price and buy online immediately, or better still, give us a call and we’ll sort you out a price. You may even re-discover that insane grin.

What are the benefits of Loop RM?

• Control. Unlike RF and microstock, which is anonymously and promiscuously available through literally hundreds of sales channels, Loop RM has a controlled distribution with a strong body of the collection only available through our brand, making it far easier to find a unique, high quality image.
• Protection. Loop RM licensing protects your image from being used in a manner that is embarrassing to your brand. There is simply no way to track where RF and microstock images have been used or will be used in the future. We carefully and selectively manage our collection and know the history of how and where imagery has been used previously. This can prevent that annual report cover image showstopper, ending up also advertising products that combat trapped wind.
• Exclusivity. The nature of Loop RM allows us to license images exclusively to one client providing them with the assurance that an ad campaign’s imagery and message will not be hijacked by a competitor. In the world of the blogoshere, there is a horde of people only too ready to tell the world about each and every marketing blunder they find.
• Affordability. Whisper it, but we are very competitive on price. Contrary to calls from the cheap seats, we are not stupid and can see the dark legions of RF and microstock foot soldiers cutting great swathes through the traditional pricing models, leaving producers and suppliers alike, dazed and confused. Our response to this is to constantly try and improve our content and service levels, work with the best photographers and be both creative and realistic about the way we price our imagery. We don’t give it away, but we work really hard to stay within your budget, offer you set-fee pricing agreements to better help you plan and also reward established clients with more latitude in what they pay for our content.