When you are building your own website, you will want to add in photos. But how do you know if you are allowed? Where do you find photos for your website?

The Internet is full of photos and they seem to be freely available but mostly it is illegal to just steal these photos.

Buy a License

Whenever a photographer takes a photo, they own the copyright. To use a photograph you need the photographer's permission. Permission is given to use the photograph in certain ways and for a period of time. What you do is buy a license to use the photos.

More recently a newer way to buy photos to use has become widespread, a more affordable way, with photos for sale under £1 each. "Royalty Free".

With royalty free photos, you buy them once and can then use and re-use without paying for them again. There are still some restrictions on how you can use the photos, but what you can do with them is much broader.

Note that this is royalty free, meaning you pay no further royalties. It does not mean the photo is free.

Traditionally, photos were sold as Rights Managed. This would mean you would negotiate a fee to use a photograph for a set period of time in very specific ways. For example "Use for 2 years on my website only". This would mean after 2 years you'd have to remove the photo from your website, or buy it again to continue using it. It would also mean you couldn't use the photo in other ways, for example in your flyers or leaflets. Prices would range from £30-500 per photo or more

Rights managed photo libraries are labour intensive because every image has to be negotiated, paperwork raised and invoices sent/checked.  As a labour-intensive industry, and with previously limited availability of images available for use, photos and other images used to be a lot more expensive than they are today.

In the last couple of years a myriad of stock photo agencies have sprung up and you can now buy royalty free photos to use on your website for under £1/$1 each. With these you buy them once and can use and re-use the photos for a lifetime on your website as well as in your flyers and advertising.

Most of the major stock libraries will  have a variety of different licenses you can buy, under which you can use the images for commercial use as well as non-commercial.  If you're not sure what license you need then just contact the stock library to double-check, it's best to tell them exactly what you're trying to do, so they give the right advice though! Don't try to mask your intentions, they're not going to steal your ideas.

When you look for images for your website, you will want the resolution to be 72dpi. Most stock libraries will sell photos in two resolutions, 72dpi for websites and 300dpi for print. This is because a computer screen has only 72 dots per inch but a printing press will print documents at 300 dots per inch. If you use a 300dpi image on your website then you will be slowing down the whole site as the photos take ages to download - and your website visitor may give up and go elsewhere.

You will need to compare the size (in inches/cm) that you want to use the photo with the size it is for sale. If the photo for sale is larger than you need, you can re-size it down. If you want the photo larger you will be able to make it larger using computer software - although if you are going to want it considerably larger you might need a designer to do this for you.

You only need a 72dpi image for use on a website, but if you will also use the image in printed material, then look for 300dpi.

Remember: if the original image is 1cm square at 300dpi, then it would be OK on a website stretched to about 4cm square because as you're stretching it in either direction, you're reducing the number of dots it has per inch! Not the best way to do things, it's best to have the image at the right size to start with, but it's all really working on basic maths, so you can get away with that.

When stock libraries say they are not for commercial use, this does not mean that you can't use them in your website. What this means is that you cannot benefit commercially from the photo - so that would be, for example, if you were creating web templates for resale, or producing canvas prints for resale, or printing the photo onto mugs for resale. Most stock agencies will have an Extended Rights License available for you to do these things - every photo and every stock agency will have different rules so just be aware and check.

If you are simply using the photos on your website or in your flyers, leaflets etc then this won't be considered commercial use and a standard license would be enough.

You can use Google to search for photos that you can use on your website. Once you have found an image for your website you will then just need to quickly check how you can use it, many require a link back to their site for you to do this.

To use Google Image search to find photos to use on your website legally, simply:

• Go to google
• Click on the images link/tab
• Click on Advanced Image Search
• Close to the bottom there is a drop down box for Usage Rights, click that and you will want to choose Labeled for Reuse.
• Choose the search words and other criteria you want in the top half of the page
• Click the GOOGLE SEARCH button at the top
• You will now only see images that have been marked as able to be reused.
  

Flickr is a site that professional and amateur photographers around the world use to show off their photos. Most of these will not be available for you to use, they're just there for the photographer to show people their photos.

However, when photographers upload their photos to flickr they have a tick box they can tick that marks the photo as available for use under the Creative Commons license, which to you means "free to use". Most will still require you to link back to their photo to say where you got it from.

To search these photos go here: Flickr Creative Commons Photos

• Get your photos from stock photo libraries, you'll get a much greater choice of professionally produced photos
  
• Check the license to see how you can use the photos, this is more important if you've got free photos for your website as it's easier with stock libraries to be sure
  
• Ensure you buy the right resolution for your use, you need a higher resolution if you're printing out a photo
  
• Check the physical size of the photo for sale and compare that to the size you need to reproduce it at
  

Good luck with using photos legally on your website!