Free Images

 

I am constantly looking for free images that are good, free, and easy to search through. I also need to know what sources to recommend to students on a regular basis.

It’s not just about copyright – its about teaching students that not everything is in the public domain – an important point as more students and teachers move into online environments of blogs, wikis etc…. Including images with postings enhances the experience for the reader and can also help to illustrate or support the composers viewpoint.

FlickrCC – This tool searches Creative Commons images from Flickr

Greasemonkey and Flickr for the Adventurous is a way of automating a Flickr Attribtion Helper.

FlickrStorm -let’s you search  photos on Flickr  that are made available through a Creative Commons license

Compfight – a beautifully simple  interface! Tailor your search for commercial or creative commons; original and even safe search.

Veezzle – a search engine which finds free stock photos by crawling dozens of websites.

When you need for some pictures to freshen up your webpage you should:

  • Make sure you understood the license correctly
  • Get the correct HTML code for the IMG tag
  • Link the image back to the Flickr photo page
  • Give the author of the image proper credits (Attribution)
  • Link to the Flickr profile of the author
  • Link to the license the image is licensed under

The solution you’ve been waiting for is offered by ImageCodr.org.   You simply enter in the URL of the picture page (as seen in your browser)  and ImageCodr.org will generate the ready-to-use HTML code.

Others image tools worth trying:

  1. Bigfoto.com offers pictures from around the world, including America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Pacific.
  2. Clip Art for foreign/second language instruction. Basic but still valuable.
  3. Deviant ART – Very popular community and also very good photos to be found there, but yes, don’t forget about license and asking authors first for their permission.
  4. EduPic Graphical Resources is a growing collection of images and graphics created and  curated by a dedicated teacher.
  5. EveryStockPhoto is a search engine for creative commons photos, located in Vancouver, BC. They aim to be a community for designers, developers, photographers and other media publishers who want better, easier access to license-specific media on the web. This is a single integrated search, allowing users to bookmark their photos with private and public tags, and increasingly we will be offering advanced searching options, rating systems and other tools.
  6. FreeDigitalPhotos.net has over 2000 free images that you can use in commercial and noncommercial work. You are not allowed to sell, redistribute, or claim these images as your own. You can browse by category or search for exactly what you need.
  7. FreeMediaGoo.com has a large collection of images, audio, textures, and other visual mediums that you can use for free with some restrictions. You do not even have to credit the images. The site also features some amazing digital images if you are looking for something different.
  8. FreeFoto.com says it is the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet (link back and attribution required).
  9. FreePhotoBank is a free stock photo site. Feel free to download pictures (up to 2048 pixels, Creative Commons licence) but don’t forget to link back to FreePhotoBank !
  10. FreeRange – All images are at least 2400 x 1600, and photos can be used for commercial or personal projects. Beautiful images for your creative presentations. Just sign up for membership.
  11. FromOldBooks – Over 2,330 high-resolution images scanned from more than 100 different old or rare books, with extracts!
  12. The Geo-Images Project attempts to make images (mostly photographs) that are useful in teaching geography more widely available. Navigate via map points on the globe, and capture images around common themes. Love the one on transport! and community is cool too!
  13. Image*After is a large online free photo collection. You can download and use any image or texture from our site and use it in your own work.
  14. ImageBase – Pictures are free to use and really high resolution. Includes Powerpoint templates.
  15. Life Photo Archive – Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.
  16. MorgueFile.com offers stock photographs in high resolution digital. With over 55,000 images, divided into several categories, they are sure to have something you can use. The thumbnails are small, but your search results display quickly, and the photos are of top quality. (The term “morgue file” is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats. Although the term has been used by illustrators, comic book artist, designers and teachers as well The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. This is the world wide web’s morgue file)
  17. OpenPhoto – 20 different categories, with high quality nature, technology and architectural photos.
  18. Pics4Learning collection is intended to provide copyright friendly images for use by students and teachers in an educational setting. Lesson plans also included.
  19. Sprixi – Images have liberal licences such as Creative Commons or are in the public domain
  20. Stock Exchange offers high quality images taken around the world by amateur photographers. If you have an interest in photography, you can even submit your own pictures. There are various searching options and over 100,000 images. The photographers establish the terms, so read the fine print, but most pictures can be reused immediately.
  21. TurboPhoto provides free stock images from 10 categories all of which are in the public domain.
  22. UVic’s Language Teaching Library consists of about 3000 images useful in the teaching of basic vocabulary in a variety of languages. Its purpose is to provide a set of those graphics most basic and useful for low-level language-teaching, and at the same time, to make them as easily searchable as possible. Transparent an matte images included.
  23. Wikipedia: Public domain image sources – though in this case you will need to check the copyright.
  24. Wylio is an all-in-one picture finder and re-sizer made specifically for bloggers.
  25. Yotophoto is now indexing well over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other ‘copyleft’ images

For a full Photography Toolbox you shouldn’t go past Mashable’s 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources.

You may also enjoy reading the Complete guide to Finding and Using Incredible Images in Flickr. Includes an excellent explanation of Creative Commons and images.

http://www.phillipmartin.info/clipart/homepage.htm
http://familyandfriends.phillipmartin.info/friends_waving.htm

Thanks to Judy Oconnell and Susan Stephenson from OZTLnet for the ideas and links http://www.thebookchook.com, http://heyjude.wordpress.com/find-free-images-online/