Finding Free Images for your Webpages
For any website or blog, graphics and pictures are important. A great picture can help capture a reader’s interest, inviting them to stay longer and read your content. Yet, there are a lot of measures in finding images – particularly legal issues. They cannot be used for business or personal purposes without the permission from the copyright holder.
I would like to share some guidelines on where and how to find free images to use in your blog posts. You can use this with your Virtual Assistants if you are training them from scratch.
A lot of people think you can just look for Google Images and use those images on your own blog. In most cases, that is probably illegal. When it comes to the images you must:
1) Own purchased rights to all images you use, and know the license limits.
2) For free images, you can use public domain images.
3) You can use “commercial use allowed, creative commons, attribution required” and provide a link from the author’s page.
Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization from the United States, devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.
When you have an option to use free photos that are accessible, why risk using copyrighted images? Thankfully, there are plenty of sites that offer free images that can be used on blogs and business websites like ours.
For your convenience, I have compiled a list of free image sources. Check them out below.
- PixelPerfect – This interesting site includes over 4,000 stock photos, neatly ordered in categories from Abstract and Animals to Places and Transportation. The best part of Pixel Perfect Digital is the collection of digital art and illustrations, though; stylish images that are hard to find elsewhere.
- CCSearch -The organization behind the creative commons licenses, provide a search engine on their website. This search engine, called CC Search, is one of the best ways to find royalty free images that you can use legally.
- Flickr – You would have to ask permission from the photographer if their image is “All Rights Reserved”. There are some images on Flickr under ‘Creative Commons’ where the owner of the image allows limited use (usually with a credit but you MUST check).
- Google Advance Image Search – The Advanced Search is your quick bet because it is familiar and allows you to filter your search by license. You can search for only images that can be reused (free to use).
- Sprixi – Sprixi sources shareable images from Flickr and OpenClipArt.
- Pixabay – Pixabay searched for both photos and clipart from other public domain websites. The image information tells you about the source, the type of license, and the important EXIF information. You can also view photos by the camera used.
- Pinterest – It gives you a roundabout way to search for free images. Log-into Pinterest. Use the search box to type in “public domain” and view the results. Click on the specific image and then click on the source to view the license and verify if it’s truly public domain or at lease Creative Commons.
- Morguefile – Looking for high resolution stock photos for your illustration, comp or design needs? Search Morgue File for free reference images. Yes, they’re all completely free; whether you’re an illustrator, art director, instructor or looking to add a defining visual to a presentation.
- Free Photos Bank – The Free Photos Bank site provides a typical range of free photos – people, animals, landscapes and so on. They’re better at abstract shots, though, backgrounds and digital artwork, so this is a good place to start looking for those more unusual images. There’s no registration required so downloading is easy, whatever you’re after.
Do you know of any other great sites to find free images for your blog? We would love to hear about them. 🙂