Getty Images gives 35 million free pictures to bloggers

Shoppers walk past the Getty Images gallery in London (GETTY IMAGES)

The Getty Images picture agency is taking the radical step of making its huge photo library of 35 million images available for free for social media users and bloggers.

Anyone will be able to use Getty's new "embed" tool to use its digital images for "non-commercial purposes".

Senior vice-president Craig Peters said Getty was responding to "the rise of the self-publisher".

He explained: "We saw people using Getty Images' content widely but they weren't using it with a licence and there wasn't any benefit to the photographer."

The "embed" tool ensures that when someone posts or shares a photo, it includes "meta-data" such as the name of the photographer and links back to Getty.

That should help Getty, which is owned by the private equity firm Carlyle and the Getty family, to get paid if a commercial organisation spots the picture in a blog and wants to use it.