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Posted in Featured, How-To | content Creative Commons free images image content images licensing media
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Images, as well as video content, are a very good way to make your website more lively and emphasize important points about an article. They also do well in social media, where a single successful image can bring hundreds to your site.
The difficult part about using images is that creating them requires a lot of work. You either need to go around taking photos of the topics in question, or have pretty good drawing skills. Therefore many choose to do it the easy way and use someone else’s images.
You don’t need to steal either, since the web is filled with free images, if you know where to look for them. Here is a list of sites with free images that you can use on your website. Some of them have public domain images, while others use a Creative Commons license. Always make sure you comply with the license restrictions.
- WikiMedia Commons - Over 2 million media files, most under CC licenses or dual licensed.
- Flickr - user photos shared under various conditions - many use a Creative Commons license.
- WP Clipart - Around 20,000 public domain clipart images.
- PublicDomainPictures.net - The name says it all. These are free to use in any way.
- Free Photos for Commercial Use - Public domain photos.
- PD Photo - Thousands of public domain photos.
- GIMP Archive - Over 3GB of public domain images.
- Open Clip Art - Public domain clip art as vector graphics.
- PD Clipart - 25,000 clipart images in public domain.
- Creative Commons Search - Search for Creative Commons licensed content.
At least one of the above sites should meet your image needs. If all else fails, you can try Google Image Search and see the license agreement on the site. If one does not exist you can ask the owner, but never use an image without permission. There are too many images you can use for you to do that.
by Sutocu | February 6, 2008 
Thanks for all the great links. I was actually looking for some more place to find decent pics, since my blog is still relatively new. Thanks again!
just what i need
i always run into trouble with images
owners msg me to remove those..
great links!
yah good source of pictures
but sometimes these free pics are a pain in the neck, they don’t have the ‘look’ that i’m looking for
Thanks for image sources, I bookmarked this page.
Also I would add one more website, with royality free images:
http://www.sxc.hu/
Thanks for the list.
I know about flickr but didn’t know about that pd clipart site, and it’s just what i’ve been looking for!
Very useful, of those listed I only really ever use Flickr. Thanks for sharing.
TQ for sharing this. Now i have more choices to play with. Great tips and advice too. appreciated.
cheers.
Wow! thank you so much. I did a search on the above sites and indeed– many options and choices. Thanks for the tips and cautions to observe on the licencing.
great work!
This is really nice. You got stumbled. I only knew flickr and cc search from your list.
To me this is the hardest part of building a new website. It is hard to find good images you can use, and I am not good enough with a camera to get my own. Thanks for the great links!
Thanks for the websites. I knew about alot of them and I use flickr both to upload images and to get them myself but I will save this list.
Thanks for sharing those websites to us! It won’t be hard for me to look for some images that I need. This will save my time.
Thanks for giving us this website. This really help me in looking for some images that I need.
Good list man… of course, there’s always Google images!
Great list, I am just beginning to build websites so this list will help a lot.
Are those site collecting the images legally? I have heard that some free image sites just break the copyright rule to collect the images and give them for free…
I have to check it out.
Do you need any registration for these sites? Anyway thanks for the links.
Nice list. Only used Flickr really till now for free images. On a side note paying some when needed really good picture for website or blog really ain’t that bad, and I agree with AntiVirus that sometimes it’s really hard to find just the “right” picture free or not.
thank you so much.
this is very usefull. is those images copyrighted? or just free?
Thanks a lot for the valuable information. I was actually looking out for the sites where we can find free images with real good quality and the list that is provided is extraordinary and will definitely solve my purpose.
Nice list. Some of them I knew and some I didn’t. Its very valuable resources while doing of web designing stuff.
Thanks
chris
An abosolute quality list, ive bookmarked this as one of my favourites thansk for the great list
try it!! Hi guys! Like you guys r rite on with this recent one:o
I’ve only tried Flickr so this is definitely a helpful list. Thanks so much!
Excellent. Will use the images to decorate my site!
Thanks a lot for this resource. i use some of the sites but now I`ll use more. Thanks a lot for these links.
My favorite source is to go to flickr and search for the liscensed images. Then sort them by most interesting.
Thank you for a great list of pic resources. When you are putting a site together getting images can be a real trick.
There is one other idea that you may not have considered many states have old photo archives that are public domain. No they are not new flashy images but the notalgic factor can be interesting. For example I live in Colorado and the old mining pictures as well as skiing at the turn of the century are pretty interesting.
That’s a nice list of links. DeviantArt has some really nice images and graphics but sadly they aren’t exactly free. Thanks for sharing by the way!
Thats Great list Thanks for sharing it here…
i have one on my bookmark
maybe u can add to your list
acobox.com
Great information, thanks a lot lot to Sutocu. You’re my master. Don’t be bore to share your knowledge to Us all..