LibGuides: Open Education: Find Open Images

Finding high-quality images is easier than ever with the abundance of openly licensed image resources available online. These platforms offer a wide range of images that can be used freely, often without the need for attribution. However, it's always important to double-check the licensing conditions for each image to ensure compliance.

Openverse
A meta-search tool that searches across more than 800 million creative works, including images, audio and video. Can be used to find CC-licensed and public domain images on Google Images, Wikimedia, Europeana, etc.
Flickr Creative Commons Search
Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license. Look under the “Additional Info” on an image page for licensing info and terms of use.
Wikimedia Commons
20 million freely usable image, sound and video files. All files are Public Domain or CC-licensed. Check the "Licensing" section for an image to find any terms and conditions for reuse / instructions on attribution.

Pixabay, Pexels, and Unsplash - Free high-resolution stock photos depicting a wide variety of subjects. These images do not have Creative Commons licenses, but each site has its own license that allows for image use.
UBC Library - UBC Library curates a great list of places to find Openly licensed and Public Domain materials. Pay attention to the different columns of use: whether in the LMS (Moodle) or on a public site.

Additional sites

Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago is pleased to offer free, unrestricted use of over 50,000 images of works in the collection believed to be in the public domain or to which the museum otherwise waives any copyright it might have. Such images are made available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
Filter searches by "Public Domain"
Biodiversity Heritage Library
The Biodiversity Heritage Library improves research methodology by collaboratively making biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community. The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL is revolutionizing global research by providing free, worldwide access to knowledge about life on Earth.
Getty Open Content Program
The Open Content Program makes high-resolution images of public domain artwork from the Getty collections freely available, without restrictions, to advance the research, teaching, and practice of art and art history.
Check the Content disclaimer & usage rights at the bottom of each entry
The Met
Data about The Met collection, including over 492,000 images of public-domain artworks, available for free and unrestricted use.
Filter searches by "Open Access"
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art has an open access policy for images of works of art in our permanent collection which the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are available for download free of charge for any use, whether commercial or non-commercial.
Smithsonian Open Access
Download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that is committed to the long-term preservation of and access to its collections online and on-premises, to ensure they can be used by researchers and the wider public for generations to come.
Unless otherwise stated, content on the Wellcome website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) licence.

KPU Library

Open Education

Additional sites