A system for distributed digital images. The system comprises image publishers, image buyers, and a system service center. Image publishers, interested in selling rights in high-resolution images, publish thumbnails representing those images in the service's web-site. The image buyer, searching the service web site for images of particular attributes, selects those thumbnails meeting her/his requirements, and gets from the service a temporary direct communication link to the image repository of the image publisher. The buyer gets the option to remotely review, enhance and embed, in a page layout, the low-resolution representation of the selected thumbnails, and quality check parts of the high-resolution images. The buyer negotiates a price with the image publisher, and pays via the service's billing module. On conclusion the buyer acquires the high-resolution image file directly from the publisher's repository.