Many websites share images that are legal to use for editorial and commercial purposes. However, it’s important to verify a particular image’s origin and license information before assuming you can legally use any image.
Also consider what you can (or can’t) tell about how an image was produced. You’ll see that many of these sites tend to have different visual styles, with some leaning toward staged and stylized images that may not be appropriate for journalism.
Doing a basic Google search for images is not a good way to find free-to-use material. However, there is a dropdown option under “Search Tools” to filter results by license type. After finding an image this way, you must still click through to the website to locate the specific permission details. Recently, the results tend to include some foreign websites that don’t seem to be in full compliance with U.S. copyright law.
Make sure to choose the appropriate license type from the “Any license” dropdown on the search results page. All types listed other than “Any license” are types of Creative Commons or Public Domain. On any image, the specific license restrictions are listed below the photo, with the license type linking to additional information about what uses are authorized.
Includes thousands of worldwide images licensed under Creative Commons or verified to be in the Public Domain. Check the license information since there are sometimes international restrictions.
More than 700,000 searchable photos and textures distributed for reuse without restrictions, with the license details clearly listed on each image page.
This site started as a popular Tumblr blog several years ago, and now includes thousands of images organized into collections.
More than 400,000 searchable stock images, textures and abstract graphics contributed by users around the world.
Several million royalty-free stock images contributed by photographers. (Make sure you search in the “Free Images” part of the site.)
More than 350,000 stock images, most of them available to download at high-resolution.
This searchable collection indexes images from other free-to-use sites, with all photos licensed as Creative Commons CC0.
Another easy-to-search resource that pulls free images from a number of sites, with full documentation of the license for each photo.
Thousands of digitized historic images and illustrations in the public domain with no restrictions on use if you filter for “search only public domain materials.” An older version of the collection offers additional search options.
Access to the California State University IMAGE Project, which includes about 100,000 international images organized by content areas and searchable.
Photos produced by U.S. Government employees are copyright-free. Many federal agencies publish high-resolution photos on Flickr, which also makes it easy to verify your right to use the photo. Here are some additional hubs for images produced by the federal government:
AAP and SELF Magazine released a collection of images related to immunizations for use in media publications and social media. Must include attribution.
Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers have access to Adobe Stock, which includes thousands of high-quality stock images. However, the licenses include restrictions on how the images can be used, and are not free. We will not make use of Adobe Stock in this course, but it’s a good resource to know about if you’re a subscriber.