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Creative Commons, Copyright Free PHOTOS, Graphics, Clip Art, and Royalty Free Stock Photos

COPYRIGHT FREE

3 Main Types
In case you're unfamiliar with copyright categories, here's a brief overview of the three main types:

Public Domain: Images in the public domain are works whose copyrights have expired or whose creators have relinquished all rights to the works. These are free for personal or commercial use. There is only one exception to the "free for all use" policy for public domain photos: If you're using an image of a recognizable person, you may need to get his or her permission to use the photo. Some sites offering such photos will already have obtained a model release, so if in doubt, consult the license agreement that comes with the image.

Royalty Free: When images are offered royalty-free, this simply means that the purchaser pays a fee and can then use the image without paying additional royalties or licensing fees. This also means the purchaser doesn't have to give attribution. This is the model used by paid stock photo sites.

Creative Commons: Photographers who license their images under Creative Commons (CC) can choose how their images will be used by specifying a particular CC license. For instance, a CC0 license means the owner has relinquished all rights to his or her works, while CC 2.0 requires the user to provide attribution.

5 sites that offer 100 percent free images. All the sites below offer photos under the Public Domain or the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means no attribution (link) is required.

CC0 is the most flexible license by far: "CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law."

  1. PIXABAY - Stunning Free Images Over 1.4 million royalty free stock photos and videos share by our generous community! A huge database of public domain images
  2. New Old Stock Vintage photos from the public archives
  3. Unsplash 10 new high-quality photos released every 10 days. Released under the CC0 license.
  4. Foodie's Feed High-res food images. Free to use without attribution; however, the may not be resold.
  5. Death to the Stock Photo Free images for commercial use. Delivered monthly to your inbox. You do not have the right to claim these photos as your own.
  6. .Magdeleine One free high-res photo every day (and access to a full repository of images). Use the handy filter to find images that are either public domain or require attribution.
  7. The Morgue Files Free images for creatives, by creatives A post production file, over 350,000 free stock photos for commercial use.
  8. IM FREE A curated collection of free resources, all for commercial use. Curated collections of free commercial use photos.
    IM FREE does not host the images itself. Instead it provides the user with a gateway to Flickr. This makes sure, that the photos are downloaded directly from the accounts of the participating photographers, which in itself makes sure, that changes in licensing will never fall through the grids. Another advantage is, that all of Flickr's different resolutions are available at your finger tips.
  9. The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free
    All images of public-domain artworks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection — about 375,000 — are now free for anyone to use however they may please. The museum announced on Tuesday that it had changed its open access policy to allow free, unrestricted use of any images of artworks in the public domain, using the license designation Creative Commons Zero, known as CC0. For example, the image with this article, El Greco's “The Vision of Saint John” (1609-14), is free to download in high resolution from the Met's website, no permission required. The National Gallery's website, by comparison, states that 45,000 open access artworks are available, and the Rijksmuseum has an ever-growing collection of over 150,000 images.) The Museum of Modern Art also made thousands of exhibition images from its archive available online last year.

 

The Open Clipart Library (OCAL) is the Largest Collaboration Community that creates, shares and remixes clipart. All clipart is released to the public domain and may be used in any project for free and with no restrictions.

  • Creative Commons
    You can search for audio, video, images, text, and more. "Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. We have built upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright. We're a nonprofit. All of our tools are free." Creative Commons also offers a search tool.
  • FREEIMAGES
    You may download and store only the images you plan to use as materials for the creation of a project, website or publication.
  • Free Public Domain Photo Database - 1000's of royalty free photos for use. PDPhoto.org is a repository for free public domain photos. Unless something is clearly marked as being copyrighted, you can assume it is free to use.
  • Wikipedia Public_domain_images

FREE CLIP ART

FREE Graphics &
Photos

New Old Stock http://nos.twnsnd.co/

Free Stock Photos This site allows you to use a wide rangeof beautiful government owned photos for free. The pictures may be used in both educational and commercial projects. The only restriction seems to be that you include the name. FreeStockPhotos.com in or near the pictures you use and that you are not able resell them as "stock photos". Scenery ;Wildlife; Wildflowers & Plants; Objects & Backgrounds Sky; Clouds,Sunsets Travel & Recreation Cities & Buildings; NASA | NOAA | USDA; Water & Geology ;Historical Places Miscellaneous;3D Stereo; Photography

Flickr.com
This photo sharing site requires free registration for use. Designed to assist people in sharing photos with family and friends, it is also a great place to search for photos.

Powerhouse Museum's Electronic Swatchbook - small samples of fabric have been collected and compiled in the form of swatchbooks for at least 300 years. The Powerhouse Museum has several volumes containing thousands of bright, unfaded samples of fashionable fabric designs, braids and laces ranging from the 1830s to the 1920s. The patterns on this site are in the public domain in Australia.

Library of Congress American Memory

Public Domain Images
Public domain photos. Some freebies but the site is largely promotes a book and search services. (from Knight (1998)

Morgue File
A place to keep post production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file. This morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.
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 morguefile.

Free Pixels

Open Source Graphics for the Masses

Pics4Learning.com
Has photographs and an "ImageBlender" where you can edit digital images. "Copyright friendly images for education" available for use in teacher or student projects.

Pictures of Weather

Purchase Royalty Free Photos

 

Free Stock Photos 100's of photo's in all catagories.

  • Superfamous (requires attribution)http://superfamous.com/
  • Picjumbohttp://picjumbo.com/
  • The Pattern Libraryhttp://thepatternlibrary.com/
  • Gratisographyhttp://www.gratisography.com/
  • Getrefehttp://getrefe.tumblr.com/
  • Little Visualshttp://littlevisuals.co/
  • Unsplashhttp://unsplash.com/
  • Death to the Stock Photo http://join.deathtothestockphoto.com/
  • Free Stock Photos Browse through the categories of our huge gallery containing over 100.000 quality stock photos by more than 9.000 users! Need a wallpaper for your desktop? Need a pic for your commercial website design? Looking for inspiration? Have a look around. Share your photos with fellow designers! SXC is a friendly community of photography addicts who generously offer their works to the public free of charge. If you have some nice photos that you'd like to share with others, join us!
  • CLICK How to get a picture of the screen you see.
  • Wildlife Photo Safari - nearly 20,000 wildlife slides donated to Colorado State University Libraries by Warren and Genevieve (Genny) Garst . 700+ animal species, including mammals, reptiles, birds, insects and aquatic wildlife. Press Search, then enter the common name on the next page, and youre off! U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service online digital media library. Enter a keyword, press search, and youre off!
  • Tech4learning.com. Many images, not just animals.
    Students and teachers can now make the most of their valuable time by finding copyright-friendly, free images for multimedia projects, Web sites, newsletters and more! No need to worry about buying image collections or copyright infringement, get creative for free! Your students can contribute to the global community by donating images you have taken or created for use by students and teachers. Contributors to Pics4Learning retain the copyright for their images but agree to their use in educational student projects. All donated images are approved by a group of educator volunteers before they are posted to the site
  • Bells and Whistles
  • HTML Goodies
     primers: the basics, banners, java scripting; tutorials: getting started, tables, backgrounds, forms, frames, image maps, images, colors, buttons, browsers; beyond HTML--webmaster tips: style sheets, java scripting, java applets, cgi scripting and DHTML
  • Hot Technology Tips

Every US gov web site (and probably some state and local web sites) will have public domain images: All have royalty free images --