| Image cut and pasted from Google images |
As you are no doubt aware, images are covered by copyright law – and even though it’s common practice to reuse images from the web quite freely on web pages or printed leaflets, in many cases this is actually illegal. There are, however, several ways that you can get round this problem:
- Buy images-there are a number of places where you can buy "royalty-free" images-you pay a one-off charge, but no subsequent usage fee
- Get permission from the copyright owner
- Use images that are in the public domain
- or you can use images under a Creative Commons (CC) licence
What is Creative Commons?
To learn about Creative Commons visit the website: creativecommons.org/read the “About” section: creativecommons.org/about
The Licences section is also worth a read – it may seem a bit daunting, but it’s important to understand that there are various flavours of Creative Commons Licence: creativecommons.org/licenses/
In very simple terms, the most common symbols and their (very) broad meanings are:
When people make their work available under a Creative Commons licence, they can use any combination of the symbols to specify exactly what restrictions they want placed on its use.
Finding & Using Creative Commons Licenced Resources
The Creative Commons website lists several places that you can obtain CC-licenced resources (“Explore”: search.creativecommons.org)… you’ll notice that it’s not just images: videos, sound, music… pretty much anything can be made available under a CC licence.
You can search the resources from this page, but I think it’s better to go to the resources themselves directly. I’ll focus on just two of the resources listed on that page – Google Images and Wikimedia Commons – both of which are good for finding images.
Your task will be to find an interesting image and blog about it. If you want, and the licence allows, you can modify the image – or you can insert it as-is directly into your blog (if you are on an NHS pc you will probably have to copy and paste the image into your blog). You can use either resource …or even try both if you’re feeling really adventurous.
Google Image search
Read Google's blog about finding creative commons images
To find images use the Advanced image search
Use the mouse to hover over the pictures and see which web site they come from.
Repeat your search with the Usage rights field as "not filtered by licence". Notice that some images have a owners watermark across the picture. If you click on the picture you will see more information about the picture including sometimes the creators name.
 |
| Saved to desktop and inserted into blog |
Wikimedia Commons
You’ll find that Wikimedia Commons looks similar to Wikipedia – but rather than being an online encyclopaedia, Wikimedia Commons is a resource for CC-licenced or public domain resources.
Try a search for a topic that interests you (e.g. “Southampton”) and select a result you like
I found this picture of a Southampton Corporation tram
Scroll down the page to see the section on Licensing" , which shows you what you can do with it.
In this case
- to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- to remix – to adapt the work
- 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).
- share alike – If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
When saving an image to a folder and the creator has asked you to attribute their work, a useful practice is to save the image with the creator's name as the filename, then you won't forget it!
The captions on the images in this post tell you how I added them to the post. If you were adding images and wanted to give them captions, the captions are more likely to be along the lines of "My pet dog Rover" or "Attributed to Martin Smith".
