Images You Can Use

It's tempting to just do a Google image search and use whatever you find. Putting these images into your own projects may infringe on copyright, however. The good news is, there are plenty of sites that have large, beautiful collections of images that you can use without guilt or breaking the law. Some of these collections are public domain images, meaning that they can be used for any purpose without restriction. Some of these are legal for academic use only, meaning that you can't put it on an advertisement, for instance. The individual sites tell you what restrictions, if any, there are for using the images.

The image on the right is from the NASA site. (Image of Saturn from Voyager 2.) Pretty cool, no?

I will continue to add collections as I find more that are useful. If you find another site with a large number of good public domain images, please let me know so I can add it to the list. Check out these sites that I have gathered so far:

Varied Collections

The MorgueFile high quality images, large collection. Arranged by subject.

Public Domain Pictures.net Beautiful pictures. Not a huge collection, but nice search feature and includes search by category.

Pics4Learning Nice pictures. Smaller size images (which means lower resolution) than other sites, but plenty big enough for our purposes. Nicely arranged by categories and subcategories.

Image After Many high quality images on many different subjects. Good search feature. The only drawback is they also pull up another search of images that are not free, which can be confusing as well as annoying.

CopyrightFriendlyImages This page is a list of image collections with brief descriptions.

Wikimedia commons Includes almost everything! Image quality varies. Check individual images for copyright status; many images are public domain, others have some restrictions. You can use them as long as you attribute them as instructed on the image.

Science

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Digital Library System Big beautiful collection of plants, animals, and habitats.

Centre for Bioscience Many many cool biological images. For educational use only--read the policy and click accept to get to the photos.

NASA Image Exchange Cool images from the space program--planets, galaxies, rockets, and so on!

NOAA (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Photo Library Storms, geology, landscapes, etc.