Getting free images is not simply a case of browsing Google Images until you find something you like then copying it. All images are owned by someone. Usually the photographer owns the copyright on an image and unless it says somewhere that you’re free to reuse their work, you’re not.

Copyright theft of images online is a massive problem and can be a lucrative sideline for legal firms representing photographers whose work is stolen. I know this to my own cost as a few years back I was presented with a pretty hefty bill (about £400/$650) for using a single image of a celebrity on one of my sites, that I didn’t have permission for.

It’s often tempting to think you can get away without bothering about copyright, and as it’s not vigorously enforced by everyone, you possibly can for a long time. The thing is; you could be sitting on a time bomb. How many copyright bills of anything from a few hundred to several thousand of pounds/dollars are you willing to cross your fingers about not receiving?

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Fortunately there are plenty of photographers out there who are willing to release photographs into the public domain for you to use free of charge, or free to use providing you credit the photographer (a small price to pay for their efforts).

There are many sites that offer free images for use on your blogs or web sites, either entirely free in return for credit or a link back. But before listing out some of these dedicated resources, it’s worth spending a couple of minutes talking about Creative Commons and how you can use the ever popular Google Image search to find free images.

Creative Commons in a non-profit corporation that has a stated aim of “making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.” In terms of image copyright they provide copyright holders with free licences to mark their images with so that you can know whether or not you’re allowed to use them, and what if anything the photographer wants in return.

There are various licence conditions available from Creative Commons to identify whether the image can be reused. When you come across an image that is licensed they’re will be a link somewhere on the page where it’s shown to let you know how you can use the image. All the licence instructions are self explanatory so clicking on the link will tell you all you need to know.

Finding Creative Commons images on Google is pretty simple. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open up Google Image Search
2. Click on the Advanced Image Search option (to the right of the Search Images Button)
3. Near the bottom of the Advance Search options is a choice of “Usage Rights”. Choose from one of the four licence options, depending on the rights you’re looking for.
4. Add your search term in the top field and hit the search button.

The image results you see now have been filtered to only show images that have the selected licence information. So now, you’ll be able to find the image you want and quickly see how you can use it without having to worry that you’re infringing copyright.

There are thousands of sites that offer free images and royalty free stock photography, as a simple search on those terms will prove. However, there’s lots of liberal usage of the word “free” for things that turn out not to be free at all. No real surprise there of course, but to save you a little time filtering through them, here’s a selection of some of the better Free Image Libraries.

• Stock.xchng
  Has approaching 400,000 stock photos in their library at time of writing. So there’s a wide range available here, and the quality is generally good too.

• Flickr
  Very popular site that’s got probably got millions of photos on it. The frustrating thing for me with this site is the amount of times you find a great image, only to discover you’re not allowed to use it. Better searched with the Google method mentioned above in my opinion.

• morgueFile
  A beautifully designed site that has lots of well categorised images, that are easy to browse through.

• Openphoto
  Not very well organised to my mind, but still worth a look as there are some good photographers on here.

There are of course many, many other options and sites for finding free images out there. These are just a few of my personal favourites.

I would recommend any of the resources mentioned above for the quality of their output, but there are of course many other resources you can use. I find a good way to come across new libraries is by using the Advanced Google Image search features; this works particularly well in finding niche libraries for your chosen subject.

Hope this small introduction to acquiring and using images without risking copyright infringement and nasty bills has given you a few ideas. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I need to go find myself a nice image to accompany this article!