Public Domain Image Repositories? 24
musicmaster asks: "If you search the net for free drawings you will find a lot of them, but usually they are free for private use only. I tried to look for drawings that are really free - that is public domain, but I didn't find very much. Wikipedia has some images - scanned from books with expired copyrights - but not much Could you help me further?"
Free images here (Score:5, Informative)
No, I don't work there... They also say that you can't use them in collections, which I suppose is their way of saying that they don't want you taking all of their images and doing what they are doing with them... 8-)
Nasa also does not copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
here is a clip from their copyright statement...
The NASA, JPL, USGS, and NGDC images are in the public domain, but please give them credit when using their images. The following are two statements by NASA:
No copyright is asserted for these images. If a recognizable person appears in an image, use for commercial purposes may infringe a right of privacy or publicity. These images may not be used to state or imply the endorsement by NASA or by any NASA employee of a commercial product, process or service, or used in any other manner that might mislead. Accordingly, it is requested that if these images are used in advertising and other commercial promotion, layout and copy be submitted to NASA prior to release.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Houston TX, 77058
All of the images presented on NSSDC's Photo Gallery are in the public domain. As such, they may be used for any purpose. NSSDC does ask, however, that you acknowledge NSSDC as the supplier of the data. In addition, where the source of the image (by project or as a specific person) is credited in the text, you should also acknowledge that, too.
Re:Nasa also does not copyright (Score:3, Informative)
There are some copyrights that are owned by the government, but these have to be works that the government bought or commissioned through a contractor. Also, as noted in the first link, some Government created documents / websites contain images that are copyrighted and used by permission. Any third party wishing to use the image would of course have to seperately obtain permission from the copyright holder.
what we do (students) (Score:1)
when we need to design a poster for one of our
events, we almost always surf the net for sexy
pictures of people like carmen electra in FHM [fhm.co.uk]
SEX SELLS !!!
Copy/Paste a decent pic, obfuscate it
(not always, showing some skin is appreciated by many!)
example : Carmen Electra
and bob's you're uncle. and it's free
who is bob? and why is he my uncle?
the oldies... (Score:2, Informative)
you are looking for images that is public domain on the internet? works of art usually have to be at least half a decade old or to have their copyrights expired...
tho you could always rip pics from the antique roadshow online =)
istockphoto.com (Score:5, Informative)
slashdot! (Score:1)
I got it! (Score:3, Funny)
1. Make new website freepixarchive.com.
2. Convince VCs you can charge a monthly fee for access to a well-organized archive of public domain imagery.
3. Ask Slashdot where to get the damn images from because you can't find any.
4. ????
5. Profit!
Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
These come from public domain sources, that Dover re-prints [yahoo.com] on dead-trees.
careful... (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you know, whoever scans it automagically has the copyrights to the scan itself. It's like when the New York Philharmonic plays Mozart. Sure, the music's out of copyright (not that the United States EVER honored copyrights from the seventeenth century -- it couldn't, cuz' it didn't exist), but each "instantiation" isn't. Photos of famous paintings are the same way.
So, CAREFUL. Just because Raphael has been more than seventy years dead (or however copyright might read today), doesn't mean that the photographer of the photo you're looking at of one of his painting's is! (That should be rephrased for clarity, but whatever, 3.0 parses it.)
Likewise, just because the Penguin Classic you're eyeing has a title from the ninteenth century doesn't mean that the particular typography of the book is out of copyright. Only when you hold in your hand a book whose author, and the copyright holder of anything cited "used with permission", has been seventy years dead, can you use extracts from that book, and even then only if you make it yourself.
In other words, go take a picture of a tree and make it purdy with photoshop. It'll save you trouble.
Re:careful... (Score:1)
Likewise, just because the Penguin Classic you're eyeing has a title from the ninteenth century doesn't mean that the particular typography of the book is out of copyright. Only when you hold in your hand a book whose author, and the copyright holder of anything cited "used with permission", has been seventy years dead, can you use extracts from that book, and even then only if you make it yourself.
EndQuote>>
If all that is copyright is the typography, then one can feel free to use the text, just not *images* of the text. After all, the text is seperate from the typography. Furthermore, even if a book is fully copyrighted, you are entirely allowed to use short excerpts for certain purposes.
Check people's web pages? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be nice if there were a free content mindset out there as pervasive as the free/open source mindset is. It's not obvious, really, for someone to release their goofy pics under a permissive license. I'm not certain how or if it would ever catch on, though years ago I was more or less saying the same thing about open source.
As for the quality of pics taken by average Joes with digital cameras--that's another matter!
--Tom
Re:Check people's web pages? (Score:1)
Open Source Graphics (Score:1)
It's quite possible to license graphics under any free or open source license. There are several interpretations then of what is 'source' and what is 'compiled', but they add up to the same thing. The most sane form (IMHO) of what is 'source' and what is 'compiled' is that any image *file* is source (as it is friendly to edit with normal tools) if it is in a standard format, preferably something raw like XPM or BMP. The picture as printed, or shown on display, is the 'compiled' output.
Think about it - otherwise how do GPL games (like freeciv [freeciv.org]) work?
-- SamMy favorite online images: Library of Congress (Score:5, Informative)
They have different sizes of most images. In some cases they have very large (multi-megabyte) TIFF images.
Check this out, these are panorama images: (really beautiful) http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/pansubjindex1.html
It is really amazing what you can find: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
This is a good link too:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mdbquery.html
Some are public domain and some are not
This link describes the many different copyrights and restrictions:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/print/195_
It's yours so enjoy it!
Wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)
Found this page with plenty of links to public domain images while I was reading about the project. [wikipedia.org]
A few sources... (Score:1)
Much of the material available from the US government is not copyrighted. Like another poster said, the LOC is a good place to start. You'll want to check for copyright notices before you suck the images off of a random
Another tactic is to look for images using the Google image search. The nice thing about this method is that you have pretty good control over what you find. The problem is that what you find often isn't free. Here's an approach that I've used in the past:
Search for what I'm looking for on Google.
Find a few images that I might be interested in.
Select the images that look like they've been taken by student photographers.
Contact the photographer about using their work.
Sometimes they'll let you use their stuff for free, especially if you give them credit. Other times you'll have to cough up some green or buy them some kit. The quality of the work varies so don't overspend. If they quote you big numbers, remind them that you could always go to Getty or Corbis and be done with it. Be sure to get written permission before doing anything with images you source this way. If there are people in the picture, they should also sign a release. It's a ton of work, but there have been times when I've found great shots this way.
That's really the problem with the free stuff. When you're working on a project you probably have a specific image in mind. Finding that image and getting permission to use it for free often takes more time than it's worth. If someone is paying for your services make them pay for the stock photo. That's why it's called time and materials.
For in-house productions (no paying client) I'd recommend Getty Works [gettyworks.com] a royalty free division of Getty Images. For a hundred bucks a year you get access to almost all of their images. Sure, they only give you the low-res stuff, but for the web it is usually good enough. Not affiliated, but fairly happy with what they offer.
It might not be what you're looking for... (Score:1)
...but since you weren't very specific about subject matter, I might as well mention that I have a few dozen pictures (drawings and computer-generated) for perusal at my website. Start here. [clara.net]
I retain the copyright on these images, but I'm fairly permissive about what you can do with them - basically, whatever you like, as long as you don't sell them, or represent them as someone else's work. Enjoy!
The Open Photo Library (Score:2)
And check out ibiblio while you're at it. If you don't recognize the name, you may have known them as Sunsite or Metalab.
GIMP-savvy (Score:2)
DHD Photo Gallery (Score:1)
a great, diverse selection (yes, I did contribute a few) and explicitly free.