Thursday, September 12, 2013

Tutorial Thursday/ Finding Copyright Free Images


Today I want to talk about finding copyright free photographs. I have a handful of private Photoshop students right now and recently the question has come up about how to find attractive photographs on the web to use that are copyright free. My students usually start with photos of their own pets and then move on to their neighbors and friend's pets. At some point they run out of images or they want to try their hand at something besides dogs and cats.


I have 3 image resources to share today:
Flickr.com : look for the "advanced search feature" and choose creative commons at the bottom of the advanced search page. People that upload using the creative commons attribution are allowing others to build upon and adapt their photos under certain conditions.

Morguefile.com: This site has gotten better and better over the years. When I first discovered this free image archive years ago I found the image quality was pretty bad. Today you can find some very lovely photos there to play with. They also will show you some results from stock sites that you have the option of purchasing.

Wikipedia.org:  I used this site just this week. I have a client that wanted me to create a painting of a Monk Seal. She had found a random image on the web that she thought maybe I could use, however I explained to her that I had to search for an image that would be copyright free. Wikipedia was the answer in this case.

These types of sites are terrific for finding both critter subjects to work on and also background elements such as clouds, textures, and patterns.

It is almost weekend! Have fun creating in your spare time ... that is what I plan to do.

2 comments:

Julie George said...

Thanks for thsis info.

I was having trouble with this very thing in my work.

You answered some questions for me.

Julie George

Anonymous said...

Agreed. There are a lot of great copy right free sites on the web.