We all need images for essays, presentations, posters, art-projects, and lots of other reasons, but we don't necessarily want to pay for them. Neither do we want to break the law by using copyrighted material we aren't allowed to reproduce. So where do we find them?
Public Domain images
Step forward CC0. Images which have been made Creative Commons Zero (also known as CCO) by their creators, are available to use by anyone, however they like. The images are in the Public Domain and can be reproduced, incorporated into other works, modified, and reused, without needing permission and in most cases without even needing to credit the author.
There are all sorts of advantages to using CC0 pictures. Firstly you know you're not going to fall foul of any copyright rules and break the law. Then there's the fact that if attribution isn't required, you don't have to take up space on your poster / slide / artwork / website with an author credit and a link to flickr or another website. Plus if your work finds an audience and ends up being sold, for example as part of a book, CC0 images are licensed for commercial use too. It's amazing!
Although you don't HAVE to credit the creators of CC0 works it's still courteous to do so, as is crediting the site where you found the image. If you're citing the images in an essay or report, a proper reference will be needed just like anything else.
A number of image sites offer CCO works. They are in two broad categories - artworks, and stock photography. We've listed some great sites of both types below: all of these cost no money to use, although you may have to set up free personal accounts with some of them to download high quality images.
Free to use stock photography
Pexels is the CC0 site I go to first when creating slides or websites. It's good on technology particularly, but covers loads of areas well, with stock photography that is far above the average stock shots. It has tens of thousands of pictures, including the ability to search by colour, and also has a sister site dedicated to CC0 video.
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| A selection of images from pexels.com |
Stocksnap
Once you start using CC0 image sites you get used to seeing the same stock photography appearing on many of them (it comes with the territory, as the fact that the copyright has no restrictions means any site can pick them up and use them - you could start an image bank right now using CC0 images if you wanted to), but Stocksnap seems to have a few more pictures which are unique to it. Here's the 'recently added images' from today:
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| stocksnap.io selection |
finda.photo
finda.photo (that's the actual URL as well as the name) searches through lots of other CC0 sites in one go, including the excellent UnSplash. As well searching by keyword you can browse by colour, collection, or original source.
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| Some of the 'glare' collection from finda.photo |
Gratisography
Finally, for some pictures that are about as far away from tired stock photography cliches as it is possible to get, head over to Gratisography. Quirky, odd images, of extremely high resolution and quality, free to use in any way you see fit. There's really nothing quite like it.
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| Some pics from the truly unique gratisography.com |
Free to use art and artwork imagery
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New York Met
A 1565 Bruegel masterpiece, free for you to use as you wish, via The Met 375,000 images of artworks from The Met's collection to use, share, and remix without restriction. And it's the New York Met, so they have some of the most famous paintings in the world, like Bruegel's The Harvestors from 1565.
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Walters Art Museum
Because the Walters owns or has jurisdiction over the objects in its collection and owns or customarily obtains the rights to any imaging of its collection objects, it has adopted the Creative Commons Zero: No Rights Reserved or CC0 license to waive copyright and allow for unrestricted use of digital images and metadata by any person, for any purpose. -
Riks Museum Amsterdam
The Dutch Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam has opened its collection to the public with the majority of its photographed artwork being released under a CC0+ license that requires attribution. You must create a free account in order to download. -
Getty Museum
Thousands of images of artworks are available for download, without charge, under the Getty's Open Content Program. Look for the Download button under the image. (You'll need to credit Getty when you use these, and when you download the image you'll be asked to describe their intended reuse.) -
Yale Center for British Art
The Center provides free and open access to images of works in the public domain and certain other materials, and hopes to encourage further the use and reuse of its public domain resources by all who may have access to them. -
Europeana Collections
Europeana provides an extraordinary 8 million images which are completely free to re-use, covering the areas of Art, Fashion, Maps & Geography, Migration, Natural History, Music and others.
If you have any more suggestions for great CC0 sites, let us know with a comment below and we'll add them to the list.
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