How to Find Free-to-Use Images for Writing Projects
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is an age-old adage with considerable substance.
What this adage ultimately means is that images can show things somewhat better than words can describe. Aside from enhancing the visual appeal of books and articles, images can show things mentioned in your content so readers can see rather than merely read. This is why it’s important to add images to your articles or even books, whether published or self-published.
(17 Pros & Cons of Traditional Publishing vs. Self-Publishing.)
You can add pictures to articles by creating your own with cameras and screenshot tools or by obtaining them online. Creating images is often fine for software, video gaming, and travel pieces, but it’s not always possible to do that for many articles. For example, authors can’t always create original images for articles with historical, religious, social, business, or political content. So, you must search online to find free-to-use images for inclusion in your articles or books when you don’t have any suitable pictures of your own.
Finding images on the internet for articles isn’t usually difficult as the World Wide Web is awash with them. However, finding images on the internet that are genuinely freely available is harder. A free-to-use picture is one that the original creator permits general usage of or is not subject to any copyright protection. Here we’ll look at how you can obtain free-to-use pictures for your content.
Image Copyright Explained
Image copyright protection generally automatically applies to all pictures created. This means only the original creators of pictures have exclusive rights to publicly display and distribute their images as they wish to do so. Using copyrighted image material in your articles or books without appropriate permissions is unlawful.
The potential consequences for those guilty of image copyright infringement can vary. In the best-case scenario, nobody will ever notice you’ve included their non-free images in your articles. However, people will more likely notice if you make a habit of doing that. In this case, some of the original image authors will probably contact you if they can to make valid complaints. The worst-case scenario would be that of an image creator taking legal action against you for copyright infringement, resulting in variable financial penalties depending on severity.
So, it’s best to be careful about what images you include in articles to avoid that worst-case scenario. However, this doesn’t mean you must always directly contact image creators to ask if you can freely use their pictures in your articles or books. You can use images available on the internet that have Creative Commons licenses. These licenses allow for the use and distribution of images under certain conditions. There are variable CC licenses, but Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 and 4.0 allow for pictures to be used so long as suitable attribution is given to image creators.
You can also add public domain images to your articles without permission. A public domain image is a non-protected picture for which copyright law doesn’t apply. These are typically old photos captured by photographers who are no longer alive. They can also be pictures for which creators have abandoned all rights. Such images are ideal for including in historical articles and books, and attribution isn’t usually required to use them.
Download Public Domain and Creative Common Images From Wiki Commons
Public domain and Creative Commons images are the kind of pictures you should be looking to include in your articles. The best way to find such pictures is to search for them on websites with large picture libraries. Wiki Commons is one such site that includes a myriad of images and multimedia files. One of the primary goals of Wiki Commons is to provide a repository of freely available (licensed) media content.
Wiki Commons is a good source of old public domain images. For example, suppose you want to find some World War 2 photos for your article or book. To do so, open this Wiki Commons page and input a “World War 2” keyword inside that site’s search box. You will then see thumbnails for many old public domain photos from that conflict.
A Public Domain Image on Wiki Commons
To double-check an image’s licensing info and download it from Wiki Commons, click a photo and its More Details button. Then you can read the Licensing box for the image that will probably say the picture is in the public domain. Click Download to select a suitable size and save the image on your PC.
An Image’s Licensing Box on Wiki Commons
Wiki Commons also includes many Creative Common images. However, you should check their licensing details on Wiki Commons more carefully. Make sure you use an image according to the conditions specified within the Licensing box for it. Credit must be given to creators under all Creative Commons licences specified on the CC website.
Check Out Unsplash and Pixabay
Unsplash and Pixabay are two other websites that include large repositories of free-to-use images to download. These are stock photo websites on which photographers upload freely available pictures for everybody to use. Image creators are effectively making their photos public domain by uploading them to those sites, based on the license details specified on Unsplash and Pixabay. For example, this Unsplash License page confirms you can freely download all images there without permission for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
The Download Free Option for an Image on Unsplash
The Unsplash and Pixabay sites work much the same as Wiki Commons. Open the Unsplash or Pixabay website in your web browser, and input a keyword into the search box on the site. You will see downloadable images that match your search phrase. Click the thumbnail for an image you like and its Download option. The photos on those sites are generally of reasonable quality at least, and you can select to download them in variable sizes.
Note that the free-to-use images on Pixabay aren’t restricted to photographic ones. There are thousands of freely available illustrations on that site as well. To find them, click the Illustrations tabs on Pixabay and enter a keyword into its search box.
Flower Illustrations on Pixabay
Search For and Find Creative Common License Photos With Google
You can also utilize the Google image search tool to find many Creative Commons pictures on the internet beyond Unsplash, Pixabay, and Wiki Commons. To do that, open this Google Images search page within your browser. Input your keyword into the Google Images search box and press Enter. You can filter the images found according to license by clicking Tools > Usage rights and selecting Creative Commons licenses.
Creative Common License Option on Google Image Search
Selecting that filter option sets Google to show only Creative Commons license images within its search results. Many of the results will be for images on stock photo websites similar to Pixabay and Unsplash. However, the search results don’t specify exactly what Creative Commons licenses apply to the pictures found. Click on the images of interest and the Visit button to view their source pages. Many image source pages provide more specific license details for their pictures.
Another thing to look for in a Google image search is the Licensable tag. Some images show a Licensable tag when you hover your mouse over their thumbnails in the search results. This tag means images can be used by others within certain conditions, typically highlighting a Creative Commons picture.
The Licensable Tab on a Google Image Thumbnail
If the image is from a stock photo website, you can select an option for downloading it from there. However, some licensable images found might not be from stock photo sites with download options. It’s best to obtain pictures for your articles from sites that have clear options for downloading them rather than those that don’t.
Overall, it’s quite straightforward to find suitable freely available images to include in website or magazine articles, blog posts, and books when you know where to find them. Wiki Commons, Pixabay, and Unsplash are good sites from which you can find and download many freely available Creative Commons and public domain images. You can also download royalty-free images from alternative stock photo sites like Pexels, Pikwizard, Vecteezy, Freerange, Freeimage, and Picjumbo. So, check out those websites to find some great pictures for enriching your articles.
With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!