Did you know there are thousands of images out there in the public domain (i.e., free of copyright) just waiting for you to play with them?
I’ve been using Photoshop poorly for years to edit my photos and other images, but lately I’m trying to improve my skills using some pretty sweet online courses through lynda.com*. As practice, I’ve been using images from old books my mom gives me from her antiques store, such as the phenomenally-illustrated The Pictorial Museum of Animated Nature published in 1844. Below I’ve posted a few silly things I made using old biology illustrations, including two seaweed-themed Christmas cards, perfect for the nerdy phycologist in your life.
What’s really floating my boat about the Animated Nature book is that it is in the “public domain”, meaning that the images and text are not protected by a copyright and I’m free to use them any way I choose. Copyright is complicated and varies by country; UBC has a clear explanation of Canadian public domain criteria here.
But what if you don’t have access to hard-copies of public domain books? Well don’t fret because many, many public domain works are available online for free! Here are a few of my favourite sites for images; just be sure to check the copyright status of the specific book you’re looking at (many repositories hold both public domain and copyrighted material).
- Biodiversity Heritage Museum TONNES of old nature literature in the public domain and a flickr stream of illustrations. Their copyright guide here.
- Wikimedia Commons Media here is usually under a Creative Commons license, which is not the same as Public Domain, so be sure to check the specific copyright for each file.
- Incredible Art Department A huge aggregate list of different collections of public domain clipart, photos, illustrations, etc.
- The Commons on flickr. Highlights from the world’s public photo archives. Lots of great stuff.
- The Library of Congress Ginormous repository but not that much in public domain. Great if you ever need historical material. Their copyright guide here
- US Fish and Wildlife Service National Digital Library Lots of recent photos of animals, plants, nature in general. Several fantastic flickr pages too showcasing their images separated by region.
What about you—any favourite places to find images, books, or whatever online, the kind of stuff you’re free to use as fuel for your creative fires? Please share!
* Lynda.com is a paid service, but well worth it, in my opinion, because the quality of instruction is much higher than the quick-and-dirty blog tutorials I typically used. Some of the site’s video lessons are free.
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