Let’s face it, text on its own is boring, especially if like me you are a visual person. So lots of people look for images they can insert into their work. Now although it’s easy to search for images on Google, most of these images are not free and you can’t just copy them into your own work. Or at least you shouldn’t because the copyright to the image rests with the web page owner or the person who took the photo or created the graphic. If you use it you are breaking copyright law.
So where do you go to get copyright free images? Here is a list of my favourites.
- Microsoft Office Clip Art – I use this a lot. It has photos and clip art as well as sounds and animated graphics. They also now stock images from a growing number of partner sites like iStockphoto and Stockxpert.
- Flickr – is a photo upload site, but there are some surprising good photos/images on there, many of which have creative commons licence which explains under what circumstances you can use the image. Its easier to use the advanced search and then you can click creative commons when you search. Need more of an explanation about Creative Commons? They have their own site.
- Ask the owner. If you are doing something non-commercial you may find asking the individual will be enough. I have often emailed a web editor and said, “I’m doing a course on xyz, would you mind if I use the images you have on page.html?” Usually the answer is “Yes” and of course I give the URL as my citation on my PowerPoint.
Here are some sites I haven’t used yet, but others speak highly of:
- Stock.XCHNG free photo site with over 350.000 quality stock photos by more than 30.000 photographers.
- everystockphoto a search engine for free photos, at the time of writing they were indexing 4,353,212 photos.
- iStockphoto isn’t free but images can be purchased for as little as $1 depending on what size you need.
- Stockxpert again, not free but low cost.
- Dreamstime another low cost site.
- 123RF and another.
- Fotolia and yet another.
So what images sites would you recommend?
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davemorris/20305910
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