Friday, January 24, 2014

Public Domain Search Engines

  • Wayback Machine Search 150 Billion web pages preserved by the Internet Archive.
  • Google advanced search can search for free licensed or PD works
  • Google Image Search - By default, Google does not filter based on license. Add the following (without quotes) to your search URL to display only images with licensing appropriate for Wikipedia: "&tbs=sur:fmc"
  • everystockphoto.com - Searching over 4.3 million public domain and creative commons photos including wikipedia and NASA. Free user accounts with drag and drop collections, and other features.
  • PicFindr.com - Searches a hand picked collection of public domain-, free stock photo-, and photo community sites. Includes the ability to search by rights! (whether you need to give credit, ask permission or not)
  • Spffy.com[dead link] - Searches one billion stock photos and video, including free images, public domain, creative commons, royalty-free and rights-managed.
  • Bing.com - Has an Advanced Image Search, that offers images in different resolutions and also categorizes images. Allows free querying of the bing Image Search API up to a certain limit per day.

Government Public Domain Resources

If any page or image seems missing, replace http://www.sru.edu/depts/cisba/compsci/dailey in its URI with http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/

Public Domain Photo Resources

Ordered by size of collection, largest first:
  • Wikimedia Commons hosts only freely licensed images, sound files, and other media. With over 19 million uploaded files, (as of October 2013), it is the largest free "images-only" repository. It contains many public domain images. Commons is the primary repository of media for all Wikimedia projects. Media on Commons can be used readily on all Wikimedia projects, just as if the media were uploaded to the projects directly. Media tagged with the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark can be found here: commons:Category:CC-PD-Mark
  • British Library Over a million images, taken mostly from illustrations in 17th, 18th and 19th Century books, released into the public domain, as announced on the British Library blog. Metadata about the images, and the books from which they come, is also available for download on Github.
  • Viintage.com - Hundreds of thousands of vintage graphics, ephemera, and vintage advertisements that are in the public domain - free for private and commercial use.
  • Pixabay - 130,000 public domain photos and cliparts, exclusively under Creative Commons CC0 - free for private and commercial use.
  • PublicPhoto.Org - Over 26,000 unique photos with a resolution of up to 4752 x 3168 px free for private and commercial use.
  • PD Photo - Large collection of mostly public domain photos. Read the license for each picture before use; also, model releases may not have been obtained for all photos.
  • 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.
  • PDPics.com Public domain photo collection with about 6500 high resolution pictures up to 6000x4000. All images licensed under CC0 license.
  • BestPhoto.us - about 2500 free photos in various categories.
  • Picdrome - growing Public Domain picture collection: no copyright, licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication.
  • Alegri Photos - Public domain and Creative Commons images
  • Public-Domain-Photos.com
  • 4 Free Photos Public domain images.
  • Public Domain Files Public domain pictures and clip art.
  • PD Poster Public domain posters]
  • Ars Publik - A great collection of public domain images from around the web, hand-selected for use in web and graphic design.
  • RepublicDomain.com is a place for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers.
  • Phototeria.com The site presents a collection of public domain images.
  • clker - Easy to search public domain images, directly usable in openoffice.org
  • thepublicdomain - public domain images from various sources in one-a-day blog format.
  • Free Photos - Small personal photographic collection dedicated to the public domain.
  • Public Domain Footage - Public domain archival stock footage and newsreels.
  • Open Galleries A community source of free photography, hosting several galleries with photos from all over the world.
  • The Public Domain Review - A Blog by the Open Knowledge Foundation to easily access public domain resources.
  • Freetems - Public Domain images, graphics and more, free without registration.
  • Public Domain Pictures A large collection of high quality pictures for free. Possibility to contact the authors for original files. (For some photo you have to be "premium membership" a.k.a. you have to pay !).
  • FreeStockPhotos.biz A large collection of Public Domain, GNU, Creative Commons & custom licensed stock photos and clip art. (Beware, CC images is not Public Domain).
  • Good Free Photos - All public domain pictures of mainly landscape but wildlife and plants as well
  • 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. Their collection includes travel pictures, pictures of animals and plants, background designs and many more being added everyday. They also include a collection of high resolution public domain pictures segregated according to topics including etchings of public domain pictures. The site also includes macro photography.
  • 1 Million Free Pictures - All pictures covering various topics are released into public domain. These pictures are originally created by the owner therefore these pictures can be used for personal and commercial use.
  • Pickupimage.com Large collection of of high quality free stock photos and public domain pictures.
  • Morguefile Free Stock Photos "Contains free high resolution digital stock photographs and reference images for either corporate or public use. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for illustrators, comic book artist, designers, teachers and all creative pursuits." Over 300,000 images.