Tess Gerritsen made a post today about inadvertant image piracy. This is a problem all bloggers must deal with if we want to use images in our posts. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve probably inadvertantly pirated somebody’s work because I happily went on Google Images to search, didn’t see a water mark and slapped it up there. Oops. We can’t trust Google to keep us safe on that front. Unless you’re just planning to use it as wallpaper on your computer’s desktop (and I found the COOLEST image for mine. Isn’t that beautiful? It puts me in the right, sort of ethereal frame of mind for writing paranormal.), it’s best to pull images from sites where you know the image is free.
Tess mentioned one in her post that I’d never heard of before. MorgueFile is, according to the site, a public image archive for creatives by creatives. Under their license you are free to
- Remix — to adapt the work.
- Commercial — to use this work for commercial purposes.
- Without Attribution — to use without attributing the original author.
Under these conditions:
- Stand alone basis — You can not sell, license, sublicense, rent, transfer or distribute this image exactly as it is without alteration.
- Ownership — You may not claim ownership of this image in its original state.
I’ve done some base prowling of the images and there’s some great stuff here! Check it out.
This is probably the most awesome link I’ve seen this year. THANK YOU for sharing the link.
Thank you! This immediately went in my Safari bookmark bar.
One that is better than the Morgue is this one: http://www.sxc.hu/
I use both of them in web designing. And even though it’s free. You have to always check each photo’s restrictions. Some of them still have to be credited and the artist contacted, but most are free don’t require it.
Also, http://www.deviantart.com/, is a great place too. Most of the artist only want the link where you used their stuff and credit somewhere on the page. http://www.lynneroberts.net is an example of that. If you scroll the bottom you’ll see where I put in very discreet links for two things used from artists on deviantART.
I always use these sites in bloggin and web design. If I’m doing something silly, a one time use sort of deal, I might pull a picture off of google. But these days I’ve even stopped doing that.
I’ve used Stock Xchange myself and have just recently discovered deviantart. But thanks for mentioning them for others!
Wow. Check out the errors in that comment. lol