What Is Fair Use?
Let’s begin by explaining what is fair use? (in US copyright law) The doctrine that brief excerpts of copyright material may, under certain circumstances, is quoted verbatim for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research, without the need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder.
Bottom line you might be violating copyright laws if you have not directly received permission from the owner to use their images in your blog. We do not have the right to use someone else’s images without their approval.
Copying Other Bloggers
Another common mistake we make is copying other bloggers. They place disclaimers on their website about the images their using. Beware of copying what other bloggers do even if they are known in the blogging industry.
Be diligent about doing your research about copyright images. For the most part, many bloggers find pictures on Google and paste it on their website giving attribution back to the owner thinking this is fair use. However, there are waiting for a lawsuit to happen.
Top 10 Copyright Free Images Sources
Free images have a huge collection of copyright free, illustrations, vector art, and photographers. The images are free to copyright. Make sure to read the licensing of the image and give proper attribution if required.
- Browse over 388,087 free photos and illustrations.
- Browse 2.4 million premium photos and illustrations.
Offers free high-quality images with over 530,000 free photos, vectors, and art illustrations. All images and videos on Pixabay are released of copyrights under Creative Commons CCO. You can download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty-free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.
Flickr is one of the biggest platforms to find terrific pictures. Find images in Flickr search through creative commons. Make sure to check the image license and give proper attribution.
Another great way to find images is by using Microsoft Office. I personally use it all the time. Most of the content on Microsoft office is protected by a license. Make sure to check the licensing details of any image before downloading.
Wikimedia Commons is a great resource where you can find free images anyone can use. The images found in Wikimedia Commons are in the public domain and, therefore, copyright free. These images are available for anyone to use and modify them for any purpose.
Google is another terrific way to help bloggers to find free images. The same rule applies to make sure to find images labeled for reuse. The majority of images might require some type of attribution so is important to read the licensing before downloading for use.
Another great place to find high-resolution stock photos is Morgue File. All the images on Morgue File are completely free. The purpose of the site is to provide free image reference materials for illustrators, comic book artist, designers, teachers, and all creative pursuits.
Get more than a million free vectors, photos, and free icons. They offer exclusive freebies and all graphics resources that you need to for your projects. Most of the pictures do require to add attribution. Freepik makes it easy to use with the license instructions right underneath the image you wish to download.
Free Range Stock is another great source high-resolution stock images and textures for free with photographer and ad revenue sharing system.
Unsplash is ultimately one of my favorite new platforms to get images for my blogs. Every 1o days they post 10 new photos. You’re free to do whatever you want with the high-resolution photos! All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under creative commons zero.
I hope this article comes in handy for anyone using copyright images. Sooner or later you might get caught. Make sure to implement these changes to avoid this happening to you. Make sure to spread the word and share top 10 copyright free images sources for bloggers with your fellow bloggers
Thanks so much for putting this together for us Nancy. I’m always looking for places to get images for my blog post. I love using Pixabay and I will be checking out the other sites you mentioned here.
Hope you’re having a great week!
Cori
Hi Corina,
You’re very welcome! I am glad the post was very helpful! Enjoy!
Hi Nancy,
What a helpful list you’ve put together.
Thank-you so much!
Like Cori, I have enjoyed using Pixabay (thanks to the fact that she pointed me to it).
I’ll take a look at the other resources you’ve mentioned here – and I’ll keep this post bookmarked in Pinterest.
Thanks for sharing this. 🙂
Hi Dana,
You’re welcome! So glad the post was useful. It was my pleasure putting the list together for my readership!
Hi Nancy,
First time here at your blog and I like! 😀
This is an excellent list you put together here. I must admit I wasn’t aware of most.
I just found out the other day about Unsplash and I cannot believe how nice those pictures are. And they’re free.
Thanks for sharing,
Vernon
Hi Vernon,
Welcome to my blog! Thank you for leaving a comment. I appreciate your kind words. Yes, Unsplash have some amazing pictures and the fact they are free! Amazing.
Hi Nancy,
Amazing collection of site for copyright free image. This article will help the bloggers. Before reading this article I only know only two site which give copyright free image that are : Pixabay and Flicker.
Huge thanks for sharing this important post.
Hi Ankit,
I am glad the post was helpful! Finding free images can be quite confusing so putting the list together was great for my readership.
Thanks for the great list Nancy.
Images can drive up to double the engagement on social media posts!
Currently, I’m using an online tool called Pablo to create images for my blog posts.
This list is really helpful for bloggers.
Hi Nilan,
You’re welcome! I will need to check out Pablo. Thank you for the suggestion.
Hi Nancy,
I am glad that you put this together. It is a quick cheat sheet for me to bookmark so that I can return to all of those sites.
As a blogger and affiliate marketer, I always need free images and I was getting quite tired of Pixabay giving me the same exact images for a couple of different keywords that I searched.
I have also bought and tried the program youzign to create my own images, but nothing compare to the images that are on these sites.
I will definitely have to go straight down the list and try them all.
Do you have any recommendations on which of the sites that you listed would have the most images that are geared towards internet marketing/affiliate marketing?
Or are most of them just kind of broad?
Thanks again for this very useful post
All the best,
Jeff Sollee
Hey Jeff,
You’re very welcome! I am glad you enjoyed the post. I have found that Pixabay has the best images when it comes to marketing/affiliate marketing. The other sites carry broad images.
Hi Nancy ,
The most important and difficult task for any blogger is to find free Picture for blog post which gives user a little idea about blog post. I used to waste my time in finding pictures on google till i came to know about Pixabay from friends.I didn’t use anyotehr tools for pictures but wikimedia is i think good campare to google.
Hi Ravinder,
It can be quite difficult trying to find images that can be used! It was a popular question asked by my readership and I decided to create this post. Thanks for the recommendation and for leaving a comment.
Your readers might like the 30,000 free images at http://BusinessImagesFree.com.
Feeling good after finding so mch tools are available online to image seach.I am using Google image advance search,Flicker & Pixabay for any image search.Thanks for sharing.Find really informative article.
Definitely we all need copyright free images to avoid issues. This is definitely a creative list few names I already know and few are new for me. Thanks for sharing.
Excellent list I will be referring to it again and again.
Great collection. Thank you for sharing!
Hye Nancy Really appreciates the efforts you have collected such great source that can provide us many royalty images. thanks for your share.