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Royalty free or Royalty fee. One is free to use or public domain, the other you pay a fee to use the photo.

Digital cameras, internet photo sites and photoshop have put a lot of professional photographers out of business and at the same time made lots of people professional photographers.

I'm not familiar with public domain photos or sites. Most photo sites are fee sites and charge to use the photo.

My understanding is all photos taken by federal government employees are public domain automatically. Copyrights on photos last a long time, so I'm not sure how a photo ever becomes public domain anyway. Micky Mouse for example is still copyrighted and he is pretty old. Just because you can grab it off the internet and it does not have a copyright symbol does not mean it is Royalty free.

Some photographers hunt down and sue people who grab their photos off the internet and use them. Many have secret trace programs that tell them a photo of theirs has shown up on the internet. Others don't.

If you buy a photo off one of the photo sites, you can be sure you are protected and free to use the photo per their agreement.