Getty Images' hold on the image and media market has grown with the acquisition of image platform Unsplash.

Getty announced last Tuesday that it would fund the transaction from existing cash balances, closing the deal by the end of the month.

Getty Images already owns iStock, which it acquired for US$50 million in 2006.

Unsplash founders Mikael Cho, Luke Chesser and Stephanie Liverani "will continue to lead and operate the Unsplash business maintaining its free content model", according to the Getty announcement.

Cho says the partnership is "an important milestone for Unsplash, but our mission of Photos for Everyone remains unchanged." Started in 2013 as a Tumblr blog, Unsplash now claims to offer more than two million free high-resolution images to a community of millions of users.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash