Software billionaire and art-lover Bill Gates has purchased a portfolio of 16 million photographic images known as the Bettmann archive for an undisclosed price, it was announced Tuesday.

The deal makes Gates' personally financed company, Corbis Corp., the largest supplier of stock photography on earth, well ahead of Hulton Deutsch, a London-based archive that owns an estimated 15 million images.

In coming months and years, said Gates' associates at Corbis on Tuesday, the new enterprise will use computer equipment to digitize an undetermined number of the Bettmann's 16 million photographs into computer readable form. The Bettmann photography will join Corbis' own stock of 500,000 images, all of which have been digitized as they have been acquired.