Get The Picture?

      Finding Free images for Your Web Site
       by Billy Mabray     July 2005
 

Sometimes the most difficult part of building a Web site is finding the right graphics. You know what you want to say – you already have that on the page. You know exactly what it should look like – you can picture it perfectly in your mind. However, you have searched all your clip art and looked at every digital picture you have ever taken and cannot find the right image. Where do you look next? Online, of course.

You could try something like Google's Image Search (http://images.google.com). This will likely give you thousands of results, but very few will be useful. That's because most artwork on the Web is copyrighted and the owners of those copyrights do not want their images used without their permission. You might think they will not mind if you use their picture for your little Web page, but you risk receiving a rather nasty letter from their attorneys.

Fortunately, there are Web sites that specialize in clip art and stock photography that are both free of cost and free of restrictions. There are also search engines and directories that specifically list free artwork.

My favorite site for free stock photography is Stock.XCHNG (http://www.sxc.hu). Stock.XCHNG contains over 100,000 images, many of very high quality. The search engine is excellent – the photographers who upload their pictures add keywords to each photo so you can find what you are looking for.

If you are looking for more cartoon-style clip art, TigerDirect Clip Art (http://www.tigerdirectart.com) offers thousands of images. They cover a wide range of subjects, including sports, animals, and holidays. TigerDirect also has a wide variety of page borders and fonts.

There are many sites similar to these two, including Image * After (http://www.imageafter.com) and Visipix (http://www.visipix.com). When you look for stock photography or clip art sites, be sure they say their images are “royalty free.” This means you can use them as often as you want. Always read the terms of use, because some sites do have restrictions – they may want you to link back to their Web site, or they may not allow commercial use of their works.

Besides these collections, you can find free images by looking for art with a Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org) license. Artists who want to allow limited free use of their works will release them under one of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses so others will know how the works can be used. The Creative Commons Web site offers many ways to find CC-licensed material. Similarly, Yahoo offers a CC search (http://search.yahoo.com/cc) to find free artwork on the Web. Flickr, an online photo organizer, allows people to apply CC licenses to their pictures. By visiting the Flickr Creative Commons Pool (http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons) you can find photos according to the particular license you are looking for.

Now you should be able to find that perfect image you need. And, if you don't yet know what your Web site is going to look like, browsing a few of these sites should inspire you. Inspiration is always free.
 

Billy Mabray and his wife, Angela, own Smart Goat, a local software
development and Web design business.  They are members of the CCOKC. Comments or questions on the article are welcome and can be addressed to:   billy@smartgoat.com.