Words and Pictures from Old Books · Search
This page lists some other sources of public domain or royalty-free images that I have found.
These are scanned books or manuscripts where the images are available on the Web.
There are a huge number of texts here, available either as PDF or in some proprietary format for a Java applet.
The texts (or at least the ones I checked) are available under the Creative Commons license. Scanning resolution may vary from book to book or collection to collection. Some that I looked at were monolithic PDF scans of twenty to forty megaytes each; others were rekeyed or OCR'd text in HTML.
Terms: Creative Commons
Metadata: Varies by collection
Stock Images are pictures taken to be reused. You need to check the terms of use very carefully: you might or might not be allowed to redistribute them digitally (usually not), and if you use a stock image commercially, for example in a DeviantArt print, you may need to pay a royalty.
Most stock image sites have pretty poor search facilities, and often give very little information about the images. For example, a search for castle might give dozens of pictures of pretty towers but no indication of which castles were photographed!
2,500 or so modern photographic images, with reasonably high resolution
Terms: free but you must join their mailing list and credit their Web site.
Metadata: none that I can tell, but keyword search is available. No obvious way to find out what place is depicted or who took the picture.
A smallish collection of royalty-free stock photographs for non-commercial use.
Terms: royalty-free, non-commercial
Metadata: simple categories; photographers are named.
Thousands of free images that have copyright notices on them. You can download a limited number oer day, or buy a DVD. It's not clear whether the DVD images have the copyright notice; in any case, even though they don't charge for download, you presumably cannot reuse these images in your own work without written permission, as they are copyrighted.
Terms: copyright images, although they say they are free to download and free to use.
Metadata: images sorted into broad categories such as Architectural/Windows.
A lot of images, many in high resolution.
Terms: prohibit resale, offensive or discriminatory use, and competing against MorgueFile. The images are otherwise available for both free and commercial use, although the owners of MorgueFile can revoke your rights at any time.
Metadata: little or no extra information (e.g. location depicted)
A place where people can post stock image requests and others will try and take the photos.
Terms: unclear; seemingly free for all uses, but the images on the gallery are low resolution; it looks like they email you the high-resolution images and others don't get those. Not clear.
Metadata: none, or sometimes EXIF
Terms: you can't redistribute anything you make with these pictures in any way, unless you get written permission. For me, that's enough to make this site useless, since if I experiment with a picture and end up using it in some other piece of art, I'm now stuck.
I actually can't find the stock images here: the page is covered with too many ads. Maybe someone can help me.
Over 180,000 images.
Terms: The images are $1 each, but are then free for both commercial and non-commercial use. You cannot redistribute the unmodified image, and you cannot use the images in print runs of over 500,000. Other restrictions apply, e.g. no pornographic usage allowed.
Metadata: Faceted keywords and vague titles. Example: old castle in Belgium.
This is the biggest of the sites I know of that are dedicated to free stock images.
Terms: vary by image. Most are free for non-commercial use, or have no usage restrictions at all.
Metadata: little or no metadata, but it varies depending on who uploaded the image.
These are images for your computer desktop or screen background (Microsoft Windows calls it Wallpaper, although most people put wallpaper on their walls, not on their desks, and tablecloths would have been a better name! On the other hand most people have windows in walls and not on their desks.)
This site has a Babes/Girls category but no Boys category, which is not very promising. There is also a Female Celebrities category, but no corresponding Male section.
Terms: unclear. Presumably these are all copyrighted images and are for personal use only.
Metadata: poor. Uses faceted keywords but spelling mistakes are common.
desktop wallpapers from Norway
VistaWallpaper has zero-cost background images, but there may be copyright issues with some (many) of them.
Digital Blasphemy has some fantasy-related backgrounds; you have to pay to get the higher resolutions, although it's well worth it.
You can also make your own wallpaper using the From Old Books Wallpaperify, starting with any of the images on fromoldbooks.org that are 1600x1200 or 1024x768; find a starting image and then follow the Wallpaperify link on the image's Web page.
I am Liam at holoweb dot net; let me know if you'd like me to scan specific images, or higher resolution copies, or have any interesting uses for these images, or like them. Tell me what colour socks you are wearing.
This page is not valid XHTML because of HTML that other sites require that I display here. I am working on convincing them to change their markup.