As a webmaster, I am always in need of high quality photos and icons for my projects, great photos are just a Google Image search away but this is not the advisable way to get photos for your commercial or personal projects because of the copyright issues.
Google Image just indexes the images from the websites of other people and appearing in Google Image search does not mean it is allowed to be used.
[shadow][note]The best you can do is, go to their website, find their contact details (or try whois search for the domain and get the email of the admin) and ask for permission to use their image in writing. Do not use it until you get a yes from them.[/note][/shadow]
This might be the right way, but it is not sensible, mainly because the response time of that webmaster will affect your project.
To solve that issue, I have started using resources that offer Royalty free images and icons and I am listing them below.
Copyright Fee Images
It is a proven fact that visual content gets more attention that text. Adding thoughtful images to articles can increase its exposure.
The question is, where to find high quality images for your website for Free.
PhotoPin lets you search relevant images for you to use them on your websites for Free. It fetches images from Flickr which are under Create common license.
Free Digital Photos has an impressive database of photos that are high quality and free to use on websites, with such a big collection, I am sure you will find what you are looking for.
Stock Vault has over 40 thousand+ Free images in their collection which has been downloaded over 7 million times. Not only images, you get graphics, textures and clip arts also.
Fotolia has a section for Free images, you can download them and use them for Free, it also offers low cost royalty free images in case if you want them.
You will definitely find images for your website from over 400k photos hosted on this website. Search for the photo by typing a keyword in the search box and download the desired size of photo
Copyright Free Icons
You may require some Icons for your new Project, Finding them is not tough but these resources will help you get what you want easily.
Here is a list of websites to get Copyright free Icons.
On Clker.com, you can find high quality vector images from different categories. Clker.com is quality popular with huge database of Clipart, Icons and Stock images.
Clipart.com has millions of images to download. Both free and available to buy. The free icons category has also great quality icons.
Find an Icon and click on the free tab to see all the Icons available for free. Choose the most suitable one. You may have to give a link credit to the author of the icon.
Icons etc. list all popular Free to use icons and clipart images you can search by category. I found the collection quite useful.
The Free section at Invent Icons can get you your desired icon as the list is huge with high quality icons.
It has got thousands of icons, offers both free and premium icons. The Free icon lists few nice icons which might be useful to you.
A free and open Icon collection. Over 10,000 Unique Icons. Free for anyone to use on your computer, website or any other project. The library is not a theme. It’s a centralized source for icons to cover all your needs. The goal is to cover all common apps, operating systems, devices, and country flags.
Copyright Free Audios
If you are into video editing and are looking for some background music, it is a good idea to first try some copyright free music before purchasing the exclusive rights or hiring an artist to create a new music.
Here are best resources to get Copyright free Audio albums
We are listing some of the best resources on the internet where you can find copyright free music from different genres.
YouTube might be a place for Videos but many musicians are using it to showcase their talents. They even upload free music samples to increase their exclusive music sales, but their free music is equally good. At least to get you started. Search free audio samples, find an upload and contact him that would like to use their creation in one of your projects.
Sound cloud is the YouTube of Audio files. You will find many talented artists showcasing their creations. Find the account holder and ask for using their music.
Free Sound is another great resource for finding copyright free audio clips. Artists are actively uploading their creations that can be used by anyone.
Soungle provides an easy way to find the relevant music clip for your projects. You can easily search by typing the keywords into the search box and download the one you want to use.
The free audio clips are beautifully arranges which is quite helpful in finding the most suitable audio clip for your projects. The copyright free audio files start from $1 which is quite reasonable looking at the quality you are getting.
So, this is it. I hope you will find these resources useful. You can check out our resources page to find more webmaster products that can help to become better at blogging.
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