Thursday, December 12, 2013

Public Domain Websites

I’m sure a lot of you know about public domain and how it works. In a nutshell, these are items that anyone is free to use – images, video’s etc. I have some great links to sites that have public domain images, and you can use for them for anything. I will be posting them on this article.


There are other images you can use that have what is called  a “Creative Commons License” in the list of links I am going to give you, you will see references to this term and you should know what this means.

Creative Commons License

A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of the several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work.

A CC license is common when an author wants to give people the right to share, use and build upon a work that they have created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of their own work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work, so they don’t have to worry about copyright infringement, as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified on the license by which the author distributes the work. Creative Commons Licenses are free of charge to the public. The details of each of these licenses depend on the version.

There are four basic types here are the icons and what they mean:


*derivative: Imitating or changing or creating something based on the original work.
*copyleft: A general method for marking a creative work as freely available to be modified, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well.

I have a list of over 140 websites that have public domain images. In this article I am going to be listing 10. If you would like to get the whole list email me (use the subject line Royalty Free) I will get them to you..


  1. Public Domain Photos - PublicPhoto.Org - All photographs available on this site are 100% free for use, including private and commercial use. The site has more than 2,500 galleries consisting of over 24,000 unique photos (including the old gallery). At least three galleries--that is, up to 30-40 photos--are added to the site daily. Each image can be downloaded in at least four dimensional sizes: thumbnail, normal, large and very large. Photos are up to 4752 x 3168 maximum.
  2. Wikimedia Commons hosts only freely licensed images, sound files, and other media. With over 16 million uploaded files, (as of February 2013), it is the largest free "images-only" repository. It contains many public domain images.
  3. Photos Public Domain Thousands of high quality public domain photographs free for any use, with no restrictions. Collections included are: textures, animals, nature, and a variety of stock images for any use, including commercial.
  4. PD Poster Public domain posters
  5. BestPhotos.us Search millions of public domain photos or browse the best
  6. Public-domain.zorger.com features scans of art from pre-1922 books and various photos, free for any use.
  7. GIMP Archive - 32,000+ Royalty-free photos, organized by keyword.
  8. Public Domain Footage - Public domain archival stock footage and newsreels.
  9. My Public Domain Pictures - A growing collection of amateur pictures released into public domain. You can use their pictures for any purpose and they do not require anything in return. Pictures are up to 2048 X 1361.
  10. TotallyFreeImages.com - Totally free public-domain images - This is the largest archive on the Internet with over 494,000 hi-res professional-grade royalty-free images, 100% public-domain and acceptable for use with Wikipedia. (collection from government sources).

 Until next time have a fabulous day...


For a free initial consultation or if you just want to ask a few questions contact me: pamela@artistadesign.com



Pamela Jacob
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