hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3370.txt

Episode: 3370
Title: HPR3370: More Free Images?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3370/hpr3370.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 22:09:15

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This is Haka Public Radio episode 3,374,
Friday the 2nd of July 2021.
Today's show is entitled,
more free images.
And is part of the series,
Gimp,
It is hosted by AYUKA
And is about 14 minutes long
And Karima Clean Flag.
The summer is,
We look at some more free photos
I'd like to see if they are really free.
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Hello, this is AYUKA.
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio
and another exciting episode
in our ongoing series
about Gimp
and Image Processing.
And what I'm going to do is
take a look at some more possible sources of images.
And the reason is
that my wife sent me something.
Now she's a marketing consultant
who has a background in graphic design.
This means she's doing for a living
many of the things I have been doing
as a hobby in these Gimp tutorials.
In the days of the plague
we were doing long walks
every day as a form of exercise.
And I would often talk about my tutorials
and what I was trying to accomplish.
On one of these walks
I was explaining that I was trying to use
many different free image sites
as we've discussed.
And the next day
she sent me a link to some more.
Now it came from a marketing site
called 20 over 10
link in the show notes
and offered their 15 favorite sites.
Links to all of those are in the show notes as well.
Now these are mostly high-quality stock photo sites
which is of course what my wife uses in her own work.
The advantage of sites like these
is that you might get better quality images
than you find on a public domain site.
So I thought I should investigate
and here's what I found.
Most of these sites are reasonably free
though I wish they were to often
creating their own licenses.
Fairly typical of these is a site called unsplash.com
which builds itself as the internet source
of freely usable images.
But what does that mean exactly?
To find out I check the license
and I give them full marks for the fact
that that was easy for me to do.
Now the unsplash license says unsplash photos
are made to be used freely.
Our license reflects that.
All photos can be downloaded and used for free.
Commercial and non-commercial purposes.
No permission needed parentheses
though attribution is appreciated.
What is not permitted?
Photos cannot be sold without significant modification.
Compiling photos from unsplash
to replicate a similar or competing service.
Even though attribution isn't required
unsplash photographers appreciate it
as it provides exposure to their work
and encourages them to continue sharing.
It goes on to say what they call long form.
It's not that long.
Unsplash grants you an irrevocable
non-exclusive worldwide copyright license
to download, copy, modify,
distribute, perform, and use photos
from unsplash for free.
Including for commercial purposes.
Without permission from or attributing the photographer
or unsplash, this license does not include the right
to compile photos from unsplash
to replicate a similar or competing service.
Now to be fair this is not a bad license.
I think for most people's uses this would be a good site
and the images are definitely good ones.
Similar sites include
pixabay, pexels, kaboom picks, and shudderoo.
In fact the license terms I could find on all of these sites
look like they came from a single template.
So basically what I think they're saying
with all of these is yeah use these images
but don't try and get into competition with us.
Okay, it's not too bad.
I could live with that.
But do I have to?
Well let's let's see.
We still have more sites to go.
So next I came to negative space.
Now I was very happy to see on the front page
that all images are licensed CC0
which I like a great deal.
Just to double check I went to an image
and click through to the download page
and saw download the free high resolution image
lighthouse sky with the CC0 license
and use it however and wherever you like.
Okay that sounds good.
I love that it has the CC0 license claim
right on the homepage of the site
and that it repeats it on the download page of each image.
I take licensing very seriously
and while I tend to think that copyright is way over done
particularly in the hands of the big media companies
I am friends with an author Michael W. Lucas
who has reasonably pointed out
that he relies on copyright to make it living.
So it can be complicated.
My wife uses stock photo sites a lot
but she has customers
so the cost can be billed to a client
or taken as a tax deduction.
I don't have any clients or any revenue.
In fact I spend money to host these tutorials
on a website I pay for.
In any case
I like it when I can see easily
what the license terms are for a site
and when I got to fancy crave
I did not get that.
The site looked like something to check out
since it's aimed at freelancers
and the 20 over 10 article
had disbwered for it.
Fancy craves easy to navigate website
releases two new images from professional photographers
every day.
The photos have much more of a fun eclectic vibe
perfect for blog posts or social media
but under what terms?
I saw that the word free was fairly prominent
and the encouragements to start downloading
and fill up your hard drive
but I'm not new to the internet
and I don't take the word free at face value.
I need details.
Now the pictures are grouped as themes
so I clicked through to a collection of sunset photos.
I saw that each of them said free download
but I've seen that exact same language used to say
you can download it for free
but to use it you need to pay money.
I'm sure you've all seen this.
There was a collection that said public domain in the tile
in the title.
It was one for palm trees
but I never found anything
it looked like an explicit license anywhere on the site.
A further down check is that it seemed to auto play video commercials
all the time I was on the site.
Well next is Burst.
Burst is a site that is a subsidiary of Shopify
and it looks like it is a kind of photo sharing site.
So part of the emphasis is for people to become contributors
and upload their own photos.
If you scroll down to the bottom of the homepage
there is an FAQ section with a clearly marked link
to the license page.
So a thumbs up there.
I clicked through and found a very long page written by a lawyer
that covered the terms of service for the site.
So much of it involves
really what you agree to if you create an account
if you upload photos and of course the usual denial of liability
if anything goes wrong.
But section 4 of this long legalese has the license information
and from this it looks like there are two kinds of license involved.
One of them is CC0.
The other looks a lot like the unsplash license above.
You would need to check each photo.
But at least when you click through to the download page for an image
there is a section on the left sidebar for license.
So it is clearly marked.
I tried the first five images on the top free downloads and got this
license Burst some rights reserved.
Then I tried another image from the collections drop down.
I got one that is CC0 licensed.
Now I could not find any way to restrict the search to CC0
which would have made this site a lot better for me
but you can at least get the information.
Now the next one, pick jumbo.
This puts the word free in large type on the home page
but it very quickly pivots to selling memberships.
There is an FAQ page but it appears to be for the premium membership only.
As far as I can tell there are no truly free images here.
It looks like you purchase a membership and then you can download images all you like.
But while the FAQ page has some usage information
it's in the question and answer format not a real license.
So while they're entitled to their own business model
I don't think I'll be doing anything here.
Now free range is another site using the word free very prominently
and in this case there is a clear link on the home page
to the license information.
They use something called equal license
which aims to balance the rights of users and creators.
Now the summary of it is you can use images for nearly any purpose
commercial or non-commercial without attribution.
You cannot sell redistribute or replace the images
and you cannot sell products which derive their primary value from the image.
Now then there's a link to a more detailed explanation which is not bad
but has areas of ambiguity.
Now for instance you can use these images freely for printed items like menus,
flyers, packaging, mailers and books as long as it's not just a book of photos
but you cannot use them to sell items with images printed on them.
Now I think I know what they mean by that
and I think what they're saying is you can't take their photo and say slap it on a t-shirt
and sell it online.
But it is a little bit ambiguous.
Now they do say they have CC-0 photos available.
I could not find a way to just search for CC-0 items
and it looks like you have to create an account before you can download anything there.
So kind of struck out again.
But we've got a few good ones.
Libra Shot is a site by one person, Martin Varel, who is the photographer.
On the homepage there is a clear link that says license on the top menu bar
and clicking through there is clear language that everything is CC-0 licensed.
However it is using a version of the license that is older and has been retired.
So I'm going to say this is okay with a small asterisk.
Then there's a site called Nappy which has an interesting focus.
They only have photos of black and brown people.
So it's kind of a niche but if that's what you're looking for this would be a good place to go.
Under the about menu on the top navigation bar I found the license link
and that says everything is CC-0 licensed.
So full marks for giving the license information and this would be a go-to site
if you needed this particular type of photo.
Then there's StockSnap.
That's a site that claims to offer beautiful free stock photos
and right under that headline is a clear link that says free from copyright restrictions.
And you click the link that takes you to the license page
where you find that they use CC-0.
And in fact they go further than some sites in explaining exactly what CC-0 means.
Now wrapping up the list we have SplitShire.
And that looks like it has something again similar to that unsplash license
which means they're writing their own using common license terms.
And finally there was life of picks for which I could find no license information at all.
There's nothing obviously findable for the site as a whole
and clicking on an image does not give any information either.
So this is not anything I can recommend.
So at the 15 sites listed most of them had at least some issues with the licensing.
I think if you were careful you could use some of the images from these sites
but the ones I would recommend based on the licensing are negative space,
burst but be careful not all the images are CC-0.
Oh you have to be careful there.
LibraShot, Nappy and StockSnap.
So there's at least a few sites, maybe five sites,
that might be worth bookmarking for your future use
for images that you can use.
Now as always before using an image just be very careful
that you check the licensing.
You don't want to make a mistake on something like that.
And I am always very careful.
So I either want to see something on the site itself that says
every image here is licensed or I want to see
license information for the individual item.
And I try and practice what I preach.
And if you go to my website you should see at the bottom of every page
the Creative Commons license that I license my material under.
Now my material I license as a share-like
attribution share-like 4.0 license.
But it's on every single page.
So with that this is Huka for Acro Public Radio.
So signing off and as always encouraging you to support free software.
Bye-bye.
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