In this article, we will explore some of the top sites that offers 100 percent royalty free images for your blog posts!
How to Find Free Images for Your Blog Posts
When it all boils down you have several options when it comes to obtaining images for your blog articles. You can design them yourself using a free image editing software. Check out The Best Of | Free Image and Photo Editing Software for some of the top free image and editing software you can use to create and edit your images.
The other option is to download a free image from a site that offers free images under the Creative Commons licenses or Public Domain usage rights.
Many times you will also find images without watermarks that you can easily download but it is best not to risk it and find images that are licensed for reuse and sharing. The best free images available for commercial use, modify and to build upon are usually images protected under the Creative commons license or public domain usage.
Before we go into the sources for your images, lets take a look at what a Creative Commons Image and a Public Domain image actually mean.
The definition of a Creative Common Image as stated on Wikipedia states that,
"A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. A CC license is used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that they have created."
The definition of a Public Domain Image as stated on Harvard.edu states that,
"A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner. Because such works can be used without first seeking permission, they are ideal for many projects, particularly those that will extend beyond educational uses."
Harvard maintains a very useful guide which was also used as a source for some of the content provided in the article. The guide provides more detailed information about
Now, lets take a look at a infographic that I found on Visual.ly
One of the best sources for creative commons images is on the Creative Commons website. The images under these licenses are usually are very relaxed, allowing most images to be modified, edited or reuse without having to pay a royalty for usage rights. To make sure you are that your image is protected under the Creative Commons licenses, you need to pay attention to the symbols and license types under each image.
Creative Commons Images
The Creative Commons website includes an option to search for Creative Commons content across numerous sources, including Flickr, Google and Wikimedia Commons among many others. Once you find your images among the sources in their search engine, you can then use the images to modify, adapt, build upon and also in commercial purposes. Lets take a look at some of the top image sources within the Creative Commons search engine.
Google Creative Commons Photos
Doing a simple Google Image search will not give you the images that are protected under the Creative Commons license. However, it is possible to limit your search results to only images available under a Creative Commons license.
To do so,
Step 1
Run your search in the standard Google Image search bar and
Step 2
On the results page, click on search tools just below the search box. A further drop down menu will then appear with usage rights as one of the options.
Step 3
You can now filter the results to the proper rights in which it will be used. Unfortunately, they do not use the exact language of Creative Commons licenses, but you can nevertheless use the service to find usable images.
Here are some of the different types of Usage Rights as stated on their page,
- Free to use or share: Allows you to copy or redistribute its content if the content remains unchanged.
- Free to use, share, or modify: Allows you to copy, modify, or redistribute in ways specified in the license.
- Commercially: If you want content for commercial use, be sure to select an option that includes the word "commercially."
Flickr
Flickr has a thousands of images under different licenses from paid images to free images under the Creative Commons license and another program they have called The Commons. Images under The Commons section are images that have no known copyright restrictions for reasons such as
- The copyright is in the public domain because it has expired;
- The copyright was injected into the public domain for other reasons, such as failure to adhere to required formalities or conditions;
- The institution owns the copyright but is not interested in exercising control; or
- The institution has legal rights sufficient to authorize others to use the work without restrictions.
Open Clip Art Library
Open Clip Art Library maintains a site packed with thousands of clip art and vector images that are all completely free to use. On their license page, the make it very clear that all clip art from Open Clip Art even for unlimited commercial use. Many people who use Open Clip art use the images either as their main image or as an accessory within another image. Overall this is a great site that offers tons of free images you can use for just about any project you've got going on.
Pixabay
A site that provides free, public domain images that don't even require attribution. The site contains over 500,000 images which can all be used for free within your commercial projects. Pixabay contains a mixture of real pictures, graphic designs, clip art, vectors and more. There also a large community behind Pixabay which you can even reach out to artists and designers within the blog and their community forum. You can check out their FAQ page for common questions many people may have about their images and their usage rights.
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a site that offers access to all types of media, including images, sounds and videos, which has all has uploaded by users of Wikipedia. Most of the images is available are under the Creative Commons license which you can find its' licensing information at the bottom of each piece of media's individual page. The site has a large community of contributors and users, lots of tools and options within the site and it is available in over 100 languages.
Europeana
Europeana is an online collection of millions of images and other content from European libraries, archives, museums and other institutions. You can use their search bar to filter your results to items that are freely usable or available under a Creative Commons license using the facets under Copyright in the left menu. Their terms and policies page is very straight forward with different usage rights and their definitions.
SplitShire
SplitShire is a very unique website that offers free stock photos & images for commercial use. It is not one of the linked sites on the Creative Commons image search page but it is worth mentioning within this list. Most of the photos are free of copyright and they also offer premium photos you can pay for. The site has tons of high quality copyright free real images in many categories from abstracts, people, weddings, nature, technology, backgrounds and more. The about page has all of the details you will need before downloading any of the photo.
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