The following tools allow you to search for images on the web. For more online image resources see the Images page on the Art Research and Finding Images research guide.
A search engine for finding images on the web. Includes a reverse image search, as well as tools for images by size, color, type, date, and usage rights.
You can use Google Advanced Search to limit your search results in various ways, including:
- Searching for a complete phrase
- Omitting irrelevant words
- Choosing a domain, like .edu, to limit to webpages from educational institutions
- Limiting to pages updated during a certain timeframe
A printable version of the SIFT & PICK approach to evaluating sources using lateral reading (SIFT) to fact check a source and vertical reading (PICK) to decide whether it is the best source for your needs.
This tutorial provides strategies for searching for images.
If you have trouble accessing this tutorial from off campus, try logging into My.SBCC.edu in a different browser tab, then reloading this page. If that doesn't work, follow the direct link above to open the tutorial outside of this guide.
More Image Collections on the Internet
Archival and Digital Library Collections
Digital Public Library of America searches millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States.
Library of Congress Digital Collections provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
British Library Flickr Stream contains over a million images from copyright-free books from the 17th, 18th and 19th Century.
British Library Online Gallery contains 30,000 online searchable items made available. Create an account and curate your own images through the personal galleries feature.
Smithsonian Institution Digital Collections contains over 8.1 million cataloged items relating to Art, Design, History, Culture, Science, and Technology, with 860,477 images, videos, audio files, podcasts, blog posts and electronic journals available.
Getty Research Institute's Museum Collection provides free access to a growing number of digitized items from the Research Library, Special Collections, Photo Archive, and Institutional Archives. These materials range from the 15th century to the present and include books, photographs, manuscripts, archives, and works on paper.
Harvard Art Museums - The Bauhaus is one of the first and largest collections relating to the Bauhaus, the 20th century’s most influential school of art and design. Active during the years of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919–33), the Bauhaus aimed to unite artists, architects, and craftsmen in the utopian project of designing a new world.
Metropolitan Museum of Art contains a broad range of digital images and data that document the rich history of the Museum, its collection, exhibitions, events, people, and activities.
LIFE photo archive hosted by Google contains millions of (mostly unpublished) photographs from the LIFE photo archive, going back to the 1750s.
General
The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available online. It includes articles from leading scholars, writers, archivists, and artists, as well as curated collections of films, audio, images and texts.Tip:To search for images on this site, add site:publicdomainreview.org to your own keywords in a Google search.
Public Domain Pictures provides some free stock photos posted by members of the site. Other stock photos are available for a small fee. You can also upload your own images for others to use. A toolbar at the top of the page provides many categories in which you can find images.
Public Domain Archive contains hundreds of high resolution public domain images with new images added weekly. Some of these images are over 10MB in size, so if they take a little longer to load, that’s why.
Flickr: Creative Commons provides images uploaded by Flickr account holders who have chosen to offer their work under Creative Commons license. There are different types of licenses under the Creative Commons license, and images are sorted by type of license.
StockSnap includes hundreds of high resolution images added weekly. Free from copyright restrictions.
Wikimedia Commons is affiliated with Wikipedia, specifically featuring images. Quality of photography is not guaranteed, but images are generally available at a high resolution.
Openverse Search provides searchable content you can "share, use and remix," including content you can use for commercial purposes or modify, adapt, or build upon for your own purposes.
U.S. Government Photos and Images(USA.gov) holds government photos and images sorted by topic, some are in the public domain or are U.S. Government works others may be copyrighted.
WorldImages Kiosk is a searchable image database created by various faculty, staff and students of the CSU system. Global in coverage, it contains over 50,000 historical images from a wide variety of fields. These images are licensed under a Creative Commons license and may be used for non-profit, educational purposes as long as credit is given to the copyright holders who retain rights to the images.
Pexels provides photos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license so the pictures are free to be used for any legal purpose.
WP Tavern is a warm and inviting community where those interested in the software can hang out with fellow WordPressers to engage in enlightening discussions. This post is titled "13 Sources For Free Public Domain and CC0-Licensed Images."
Public Health Image Library contains public domain and copyright protected images, easily browsed by category.
NASA Images contains image galleries pertaining to topics in astronomy, astrophysics, space, and related earth science subjects, as well as historical images.
NASA Visible Earth is a collection of mostly public domain images of Earth taken from space.
