Unsplash is Being Acquired by Getty Images

Unsplash has announced that as of today it is being acquired by Getty Images. In a blog post, Unsplash’s founder Mikael Cho says that it will continue to operate as a standalone brand inside of Getty and that the free content model won’t be changing.

Unsplash launched in 2013 as a simple Tumblr blog with free photos, and it has since become well-known as a free photography stock site where photographers upload full-resolution images to the platform. Those photos can then be downloaded and used by anyone for any purpose without requiring attribution (though Unsplash does encourage it).

The company has been somewhat controversial among photographers over the years, as people see it as a contributor to lowering the pay rate bar for both stock photographers and the value of photography overall. With more than 100 million images downloaded every month, the platform is clearly popular.