It is getting harder and harder for image creators to get higher royalties on their images in
iStock’s Signature collection. Royalties go up based on the total number of times images belonging to a particular creator are downloaded during the year. Download targets for Exclusive contributors have been around since 2017. At the beginning of the year the contributor starts with the ending royalty rate of the previous year. On January 1st iStock starts counting downloads for the year. Essential image downloads are counted as one while Signature Plus downloads are counted as 2. Some, but not all, downloads of Signature images through Gettyimages.com also count as 2. Others, probably mostly Premium Access sales, only count as 1.