Research Guides: How to Find Free Image Sources: Home

Image Collection Database

Image Usage Permission

Sources for Free Images

The following sources provide free, public domain or creative commons images.

WikiMedia Commons A database of 16,158,374 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. Features images, sounds, and videos.
Openverse Openverse is a tool that allows openly licensed and public domain works to be discovered and used by everyone.
What is Creative Commons?
MorgueFile More than 55,000 free, high-resolution digital stock photographs and reference images for corporate or public use. Linking to the website or crediting images is requested, but not required.
Pixabay You can freely use any image from this website in digital and printed format, for personal and commercial use, without attribution requirement to the original author.
The Commons In addition to Flickr's "regular" collection, consisting of photos uploaded by its users, Flickr is also home to "The Commons," which is made up of public photography archives from major institutions.
4 Free Photos This growing library of images is a great place to look for public domain and free stock images, without the fear (or guilt) that you will be in violation of the copyright law.
Needpix Over 2+ million royalty free, public domain images for all your needs.
pexels.com

Reverse Image Search

Tineye
Do you have an image, but you're not sure what it is? Tineye is a reverse image search engine which allows users to upload an image to its site, and then searches the internet for other instances of that image.

How to Cite Images

It's easy to find images online, but a lot of images are protected by copyright - and all images you use in projects should be cited.

EasyBib Online Image in MLA
Purdue OWL: citing a photo in MLA
Citation Machine: Cite a Digital Image in MLA
EasyBib: How to Cite a Digital Image in APA
Purdue OWL: Citing a Photo in APA
(scroll to the bottom of the page)
Citation Machine:Cite a Digital Image in APA

Finding Creative Commons Images Using Google

It's fast and easy to use a Google Image Search, but many images are protected by Copyright. Click on "Tools" > "Usage Rights" > and "Labeled for reuse" to limit your search results to images that are free to use and share.