At some point you’re likely to need images for something: a class assignment, an album cover, a replacement for that ancient Scarface poster you paid too much for as a freshman. And, all other things being equal, you probably would prefer not to pay for them. You’re in luck! There are a lot of sources for free, professional-quality images online. Some of them even allow you to use their images for commercial purposes–handy if you’re hoping to make a living off that album.
Speaking of making a living, though, there is the issue of licensing. Images are often accompanied by licenses that describe the ways the creator has allowed you to use the image. If you pay for an image, you can usually do what you like with it, but creators who release their images for free often retain some rights for themselves in the image use license. For example, it’s common for creators to insist that you credit them if you use their work, and some creators require anything created with their free images be released for free as well. This may not be an issue if all you want is a new desktop background or dorm wall decoration, but it’s something you have to deal with if you need an image for your website or the aforementioned album cover–i.e., stuff you make based on stuff someone else made that other people will see.
Below are a few of the (very) many places online where you can get free images:
NASA Image of the Day: As with most U.S. Government organizations, NASA releases a lot of stuff into the public domain. As you can imagine, these images are mostly related to space exploration or astronomy. NASA helpfully provides large resolution (1600×1200) images, so you can find some spectacular images of the universe here. You may find the NASA Image Exchange as well; it allows you to search for NASA images in several different galleries. Oh, and the Astronomy Picture of the Day is worth checking out, though it contains some images that are copyrighted.
www.unprofound.com : This repository has a lot of stock photos for you to use, and it allows you to browse images by dominant color. This is better suited to finding neat looking images than images about a specific subject, but sometimes that’s what you want. The licensing terms allow you to use images for commercial works, too.
www.morguefile.com : Similar to Unprofound (above) in that it allows commercial use of its images. Has nothing to do with dead bodies, the ominous name notwithstanding.
www.flickr.com : Odds are you’ve already used Flickr, but what you may not know is that not all images on Flickr are free for personal use. Their advanced search allows you to find images released under a Creative Commons license. Since this is one of the largest image repositories online, you have a good chance of finding at least a few images suitable for what you need.
Wikimedia Commons : A sister project to Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Commons consists of user-submitted images released under one of several free licenses. Like Wikipedia, Commons resources are organized chiefly by category. If you need lots of images of a particular subject, this is a good start.
—mkp
