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Demand letter checklist

Pixsy letter: what to check before you pay or respond

Pixsy contacts website owners on behalf of photographers whose images it found online. Before you reply, confirm the image and page, look for license evidence, and check whether other photos on your site could lead to the next letter.

Important note

This is practical information, not legal advice. ImgCompliance is not affiliated with Pixsy or the photographers it represents, and cannot verify a claim on your behalf.

What a Pixsy letter usually contains

  • A screenshot and URL of the page where the image was found, often with a date.
  • The photographer or image owner Pixsy is acting for.
  • A request to show a valid license or to pay a retroactive license fee.
  • A deadline and a case link or reference number.

1. Confirm the facts

  • Is (or was) the image actually on your website, on the page named in the letter?
  • Where else does the same image appear: blog posts, landing pages, PDFs, social previews?
  • Save the letter, screenshots, and the page as it looks today before changing anything.
  • Does the company, domain, and time period match your business?

2. Look for license evidence

Check stock photo accounts (Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, iStock and others), invoices, emails, design tools such as Canva, and handover documents from any agency or freelancer who built the site. If an agency added the photo, ask for the license for this specific image and use. If the image came from a free site, save that page and its license terms. Our guide on royalty-free vs. copyright-free explains why “free” is not always free.

3. Check the rest of your site

Photographers who use Pixsy often have many images online, and sites that used one of them without a license rarely have just one unclear image. A free ImgCompliance scan checks up to 100 images with a reverse image search. Stock matches are verified against the original file, so a high-risk result means the same photo, not a lookalike.

4. Decide with the right help

If you have a license, submit it through the channel named in the letter. If you do not, or the amount seems too high, talk to a copyright lawyer before you pay or sign anything. Amounts and damages depend on the country and the facts of the case.

Related resources

See also the checklists for a Copytrack letter, a Getty Images demand letter and a Higbee & Associates letter.

What is Pixsy?
Pixsy is an image monitoring service used by photographers and image owners. It searches the web for uses of their photos and, for uses it considers unlicensed, sends a request for a retroactive license fee – in some cases through partner law firms.
Is a Pixsy letter a scam?
Pixsy is a real company acting for real photographers, so the letter should not be ignored. Whether the specific claim is justified, and whether the amount is reasonable, depends on the facts: where the image came from, whether a license exists, and how long it was used.
The photo was from a free image site. Am I safe?
Not automatically. Photos are sometimes uploaded to free sites by people who do not own them, and free licenses can have conditions. Save the page and license terms you relied on – they are part of your evidence.
Will removing the image make the claim go away?
Removing it stops further use, but it does not by itself settle a claim for past use. Document the page, the image, and the dates before you change anything.
Can ImgCompliance tell me whether the claim is valid?
No. ImgCompliance is not a law firm and has no access to Pixsy case files or license databases. It shows where an image appears on your site and which other images match stock or agency sources, so you can review them.

Find the other photos before the next letter does

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