In July last year, Getty struck up a deal with Flickr, allowing it to license selected images from the photo-sharing site (with the photographers' permission). The images are to be licensed under Getty's existing stock contracts. In return, Flickr will only make images available for licensing through Getty.

Over the past eight months, Getty's editors have been browsing through more than three billion images from Flickr's 47 million members in order to make their selection. This week, the collection was officially launched with 4280 photos.

The pictures were selected by Getty editors, who did not try to recruit new photographers, instead focussing on images they thought their customers wanted. Once images were selected, photographers received an invitation, on Flickr, to participate in the collection.

In order to have a selected image included in the Flickr collection, photographers had to ensure that they had model releases as well as a high-resolution version of the images. They were also asked to sign a contract giving Getty exclusive licensing rights.