The Problem with Images

Steemit encourages the use of original content and that goes not only for the texts you write, but also for the images and photos you are using in your posts. Sometimes you may need an image to illustrate what you are talking about, but you may actually not have something that you shot yourself to use. In such cases people often go to image searches and get the first result they get and seems Ok, but not always check if they are allowed to use the image or not (posting on Steemit can count as commercial usage). Sure, citing the source is a must do in such cases, but that may not be enough for some cases. Getting the consent of the original author may be hard to do and a time consuming task, unless the author already allows you to use his work in any way you want. It is much easier to just go for images that are free to be used for anything that you may need them for, there are actually quite a lot of these available, you just need to look...

Enter the CC0 and Public Domain Images and Photos

There are some license types such as Creative Commons (CC) that may enable you to use copyrighted work with some limitations that authors set if they want to release their work under the Creative Commons license. There are several types of CC licenses available that come with different combinations of terms of distribution and use, and very often authors publishing their photos or images under CC license allow them to be used freely as long as attribution is given, though not always the case. Some of the CC license variations do not allow you to modify the original work or not to use it for commercial purposes and that can be a problem even for use on Steemit. There is however one very useful CC license variant that is especially useful for Steemit - the CC0.

Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license - No Copyright License. The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

There are also a lot of Public Domain images and photos available that you can freely use for your posts on Steemit. These are usually works that are no longer restricted by copyright that were usually very old works, but can also be new images or photos released under the CC0 license as well. There are many resources that offer public domain images and photos for free use, including commercial usage as well.

Using Google's Image Search Correctly

You may not be aware of it, but Google's Image Search actually allows you to search for images that are available under different licenses including ones that are available for reuse including commercial usage for posts on Steemit. By default however Google searches for all kind of images that meet your search criteria, regardless of their license, you can however change the settings to reflect what you need, here is how.

Open https://images.google.com/

Type your search term and hit Enter

Click on `Search Tools` to get more options

Click on `Usage rights` to see additional options

Select `Labeled for reuse` and choose the image you like

This way the results you see available will be less, but all of the images you get should be free for commercial usage though not that you will not be able to modify them to suit your more specific needs for a post on Steemit. If you do want to modify the image you can go with the Labeled for reuse with modification option and that would probably further reduce the results you get, but you will not have to worry about what images you use and post on Steemit.

Do note that when using Goolgle's Image search you still need to check the particular license of the photos you decide to sue as they may not be CC0 or Public Domain ones only, attribution may also be required!

Use Flickr's Advanced Search

Did you know that Flickr also allows you to search for photos that you can use commercially and or even modify if you need to, all you have to do is use the Flickr Advanced Search and select the license type. Do note that there are multiple options just like with Google's Image Search, so you need to carefully choose what you want in terms of license. The Commercial use allowed and Modifications allowed (or both together) is what you would probably normally go for. These however could include images that are released under different variants of CC license and these will most likely require attribution and there could be some additional requirements, so do check the license of every photo you choose to use.

If you want to be sure that the images you are searching for are available under CC0 or Public Domain license and can be used for whatever reason including commercial usage and posting on Steemit and do not require attribution, then you need to go for No known copyright restrictions when searching for images on Flickr. This of course will limit the number of results you will be getting, but if you are in a hurry and don't want to read licenses of images and just need a photo for your post on Steemit this is the search mode for license you need to use.

The Wikimedia Commons Database is Also an Option

The Wikimedia Commons is a database of over 33 million freely usable media files (not only images, but sounds and videos as well) to which anyone can contribute and anyone can use, the project is a part of the Wikipedia family of course. It is a great source of images when you need to find and use something for things like posting on Steemit, however the media available here is not all under CC0 or Public Domain license, so you still need to check for the specific image and the license it is being made available with. Most non CC0 or Public domain images here are being made available under a variant of the Creative Commons license, so you should just check what you are required to do should you decide to use a specific image. Unfortunately there is no option for advanced search that would allow you to filter the image results by their license type, so that you can choose only CC0 or Public domain ones for example.

Go and check the Wikimedia Commons database for some nice photos

Other Dedicated CC0 and Public Domain Image Resources

Google's image search is nice and all, however it needs to have the images indexed and it not always may return what you are looking for, but there are other specialized websites that allow you to get high quality photos and images under the CC0 or Public Domain licenses. Again, these can be freely used for whatever you need them and no need to give attribution or link to the source of the image, so they are just fine for posts on Steemit. It seems that lately Pexels is one of my favorite such resources, though I'm very often also using Pixabay and there are many more available. Below is a short list of such services that you might find useful and helpful, it is in no way a complete list of every such service, just some of the ones I'm using and I like to check.

Below are some more interesting image/photo resources:

Hopefully this post will help you make your posts better and as you can see there is actually no need to use copyrighted images just to be able to make your posts look better. Also feel free to share more resources not included here that you may be using for free to reuse photos and images…

If you have a question or want to add something, then please leave a comment below.

Did you like what you have just read? Check my other posts on steemit @cryptos

How to Find and Properly Use High Quality Photos for Your Posts on Steemit