Where to Find Quality Images that are Free For Commercial Use
by: Pat Reed
Are you in need of free quality graphic images that can be used on your web site or for other reasons? Do you find yourself limited by the phrase "FREE for personal use only?" If you answered yes to these questions, then this article is written just for you. What will you find here? Twelve Resources that will provide you access to thousands of free quality images that can be used for commercial applications. Whether you need to use these images for your web site, print ads or brochures it will not cost you a single penny. For some of these sites, the only requirement is that you abide by the end user agreement which is usually just crediting the source. Below are 12 image repositories that you should know about:
Wikipedia Public Domain Image Resources
Wikepida offers thousands of free public domain images that can be used under their licensing agreement. The Wikipedia license agreements grants free access to their content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies the author credit requirement).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources
Image*After
Image*After is a large online free photo collection. You can download and use any image or texture from their site and use it in your own work, either personal or commercial. At the time this article was written, they had over 14, 000 free quality images
http://www.imageafter.com
PD Photo - Public Domain Photos
PD Photo is a public domain photography site started by Jon Sullivan. The site is a repository for free public domain photos with thousands of images to choose from.
http://wwww.pdphoto.org/
Creative Commons Photos
Creative Commons Public Domain Photos offers free audio, images, text, video, and other formats that are available for commercial and non-commercial purposes depending on the license. Creative commons grants 6 types of licensing agreements so make sure you read how each of the license agreements work.
http://creativecommons.org
Microsoft Media Elements
Microsoft Media Elements offers tons of free clipart, animated objects and photographs for you to use. However, Microsoft only offers their free media resources to users of their Office 2003 System, or any of its other applications, also for any product that includes Microsoft Clip Gallery or Microsoft Clip Organizer. Please make sure you Read Microsoft's' END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT (EULA) FOR MICROSOFT ONLINE CONTENT before downloading. The user agreement can be found at: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/tou.aspx. Otherwise, you may view their free image resources at:
http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx?lc=en-us
Pixelperfectstock.com offers a growing collection of high quality backgrounds and textures that can be used in both personal and commercial design projects. Every image is available in four sizes.
http://www.pixelperfectstock.com
AarinFreePhoto.com
AarinFreePhoto.com offers free images for personal and commercial use. You may download and use their images on your web site, print ads, brochures or any end products:
http://www.AarinFreePhoto.com
FreePhotos.com
Freephotos.com offers images that are free to download with no link back and no credit card is required.
http://www.freephotos.com
Dr PHIL (Just Kidding!)
The PHIL which stands for Public Health Image Library (PHIL) offers an organized, universal electronic gateway to CDC's pictures. The PHIL allows public health professionals, the media, laboratory scientists, educators, students, and the worldwide public to use this material for reference, teaching, presentation, and public health messages. The content is organized into hierarchical categories of people, places, and science, and is presented as single images, image sets, and multimedia files.
http://phil.cdc.gov/Phil/home.asp
OpenPhoto
OpenPhoto offers hundreds of free stock photos that can be used free for commercial and non-commercial use.
http://openphoto.net
Stock.XCHNG
Stock.XCHNG offers a huge gallery containing over 100.000 quality stock photos. Whether you are in need of a wallpaper for your desktop or a picture for your commercial website design? They offer a variety of images of practically every category you can think of.
http://www.sxc.hu
NOAA Photo Library
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photo library offers over 16,000 free digitized quality photos. The only requirement from NOAA is that the end users give the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce credit for the use of photograph unless otherwise instructed to give credit to the photographer or other source.
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov
About The Author:
Pat Reed
Researcher and editorial consultant on government news that educates, informs, and promotes the well being of society. For more helpful tools, articles and how-to guides visit http://www.communitydispatch.com.
March 2006
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