Corbis

Corbis was a stock photo agency owned by Bill Gates, who also founded Microsoft. During the time it existed Microsoft licensed images from them for use on their operating systems, along with for other software. Their main competitor was Getty Images, who Microsoft also heavily relied on for purchasing stock photos. In 2000, Microsoft purchased all rights to Bliss, then known as Bucolic Green Hills, from Corbis and Charles O'Rear; funnily enough, the image came from Westlight, whom Corbis had bought two years prior to this.

In 2016 Corbis' image licensing business was sold to Unity Glory, an affliate of Getty partner Visual China Group. During this time many, although not all Corbis images, were transferred over to VCG. Getty have been given distribution rights to distribute their images in all countries outside of China. The buyout seemingly resulted in some photos that were used as Windows wallpapers no longer being available, with Purple flower from XP being a prime example.

Types of Corbis IDs used in Windows wallpapers
Since Corbis no longer exists, little is currently known about what collections it had, although two collections are known: Spirit and Documentary (the latter of which is now under the Corbis Documentary collection on Getty). However, many types of IDs images on the site used are still known.


 * [five numbers] e.g 71810 - used for rights-managed images that came from Westlight
 * CB[six numbers] e.g CB040538 - used for royalty free images owned by the company
 * AX[six numbers] e.g AX001448 - likely used for rights-managed images submitted by Westlight photographers after 1998
 * [two letters][six numbers] e.g RR009372 - used for images submitted to the company during the 90's and possibly later. The first two letters are either the photographer's initials or part of their name
 * [three letters][three numbers] e.g NBA076 - used for royalty free images that appear on CDs, the IDs that actually appear on the CDs have an extra 0 between the letters and numbers
 * RF[seven numbers] e.g RF5468942 - also used for royalty free images owned by the company. A known image with that ID is now credited to Corbis/VCG on Getty Images
 * CSM[six numbers] e.g CSM105571 - unknown, used for some rights-managed images
 * [two numbers]-[eight numbers] e.g 42-16419439 - unknown, used during the 2000's/2010's