Where do you get images for websites from?

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Parmenides

Supreme [H]ardness
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Grabbing images from "google images" isn't quite like it's used to. Almost everything there has copyright strings attached to it. What do you do?

Purchase from the photographers and artists?
Googling "free stock photos"
Contacting other websites for permission of re-use?
"who cares, I'm going to use it anyways"?
Use anything you find but first photochop it beyond recognition?
Do it yourself camera with editing?
 
Normally our own images, or license-free images. If there's a need beyond what we have, then roll a ballpark estimate for stock images (plus customization) into any project estimate. But always making sure that we're legal and not violating copyrights.
 
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Even if something doesn't have a "copyright string attached to it", it's covered by copyright. You need the explicit permission of the owner to re-use intellectual property. There are lots of FAQs about copyrights you can read, though you should get a lawyer to help you. If you've already taken other people's images, you'll need a lawyer sooner or later, anyway.

There are lots of stock photo sites, and most charge nominal fees. You can also approach photographers directly; many are excited to just be published, and you can get images you like from an aspiring photographer directly for a very small fee, compared to a custom shot from a professional. You'll want to retain a lawyer to make sure you write a good purchase agreement for the use of the image.

You can also create images yourself, if you have the talent and time.

I've worked with photographers directly, published images of my own, and asked friends for permission to use their own images. Professionally, we have lots of artists in house and design all of our own artwork either from scratch or using assets given to us by others for the intention of creating supporting artwork.
 
Wikimedia Foundation's got a nice repository of images and graphics covered by free use licenses for use by their wiki-based sites that you can look into.
 
Wikmedia material is covered by a license that's actually a lot more complicated than a "free use license". This license requires that you attribute the work, and that you make your derivative work available under similar terms as the original. That's a bit of a slippery slope. Moral rights still attach, so the creator can arbitrarly notify you that they object to your use and you must take down the image. Publicity rights apply, as well; if the image is of someone or something recognizable, the owner of that image can demand that you remove the image because they control the derivative publicity of the image.

The words "open" and "free" are all over the license and bait many people into using the material without a complete and correct understanding of what that usage really means. Re-using Wikimedia images on a site without consulting a lawyer about the ramifications of doing so is foolish.
 
mikeblas said:
Wikmedia material is covered by a license that's actually a lot more complicated than a "free use license". This license requires that you attribute the work, and that you make your derivative work available under similar terms as the original. That's a bit of a slippery slope. Moral rights still attach, so the creator can arbitrarly notify you that they object to your use and you must take down the image. Publicity rights apply, as well; if the image is of someone or something recognizable, the owner of that image can demand that you remove the image because they control the derivative publicity of the image.

The words "open" and "free" are all over the license and bait many people into using the material without a complete and correct understanding of what that usage really means. Re-using Wikimedia images on a site without consulting a lawyer about the ramifications of doing so is foolish.
Click to expand...


Images on Wikimedia are covered by whatever license specified in the license section for that particular image or photograph, and they are not all the same (some are even public domain).
 
I have an older verion of this Art Explosion clip art package. The photos aren't as high-rez as you might be able to buy from a stock photo supplier, but they're fine for web stuff and you get a lot of bang for your buck.

•All Premium-Quality Royalty-Free Images
•More than 80% in Color
•Nearly 200,000 of the Finest Scalable Vector Clip Art Images Available
•Includes Hundreds of Categories and Subcategories
•120,000 Color Photos and Backgrounds
 
Another vote for istockphoto.com. While their prices have steadily increased over the past few years they are still an incredibly good source. I'm in the printing business and I get customers all the time that want to use some image or another they just found on the internet. More often than not the image is not even suitable resolution for print. I use it enough here that I have a corporate account where we buy 600 credits at a time which really drives the costs down.
 
flickr

> advanced search
>> check "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content"
>>> check "Find content to use commercially"
 
With all the folks suggesting istockphoto, I'm curious -- has anyone here submitted content there? Seems like an interesting idea.
 
Thanks a lot all! Lots of good options. istockphoto seems pretty good.

Quick question on those free photos that specify that they only want their work to be attributed. If the author doesn't specify how it should be attributed, are there certain conventions for attributing work? Could you put a link to their site in the HTML element's attribute as some metadata? Or are visible hyperlinks by the image the only option?

Statement with Creative Commons licensing website:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Attribution - You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
 
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