Top Sources of Free, Royalty Free Stock Images & How To Post Them In Your Hubs

By adding photos and images to our hubs, we help to make them more interesting and eye-catching to our readers. But we have to be careful when posting photos and images into our hubs; it is always important to ensure that we do not infringe copyright laws.

One of the best ways to add images to hubs is to use photographs that we have taken ourselves because we own the copyright; however this is not always practical and so occasionally we will need to look to the internet for other sources of good-quality images that we are legally able to use.

According to Wikipedia, Royalty-Free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales. In the photography industry, royalty-free refers to a copyright license where the user has the one-time right to use the photo without very many restrictions.

There are many websites that offer royalty-free photos and images that we can use in our hubs, however not all of them are "free". Some websites charge top dollar for good quality royalty-free images. There are three websites that I enjoy using frequently, for finding good quality royalty-free images that are completely free! These images are otherwise known as "royalty-free stock images".

I this hub, I want to show you an example situation where we will look for good quality pictures of roses. And then step by step, I will show you how to post these images into your hub with the proper attribution required.

For the purpose of this illustration, I will cover the 3 websites that I use most frequently to find free, royalty free images for my hubs, which are:-

• Morgue File
• Free Digital Photos
• Every Stock Photo

The great thing about Morgue File is that it offers a great selection of free, royalty-free images where no attribution is required to the photographer. Free images from Morgue File may be used for any kind of creative work, whether commercial or not. The only stipulation is that the image must be altered in some way before use, for example, cropped. It is not permitted to use the image without some kind of alteration, or to claim ownership of the image.

6 Easy Steps: How to Post an Image from Morgue File

1. Go to www.morguefile.com.

2. If you are unfamiliar with the Morgue File license, you may view the full agreement by clicking from the homepage. It essentially informs you that you may use a Morgue File image in your hubs so long as you first alter it in some way, and do not claim it to be your own.

3. Type your keyword in the search box, and then click "search". For this example, I typed in the word "rose" and the website returned a screen full of possible matches for me.

4. When you find an image that you want to use, click on it, and then you will be taken to a screen where you can use a cropping tool to alter the image. By altering the image in some way you are conforming to the Morgue File license agreement, and not using the image on a stand-alone basis. Highlight the area you wish you select for your new image, and then click "finished".

5. Morgue File then creates a unique URL for you which provides a direct link to your altered image. Highlight the URL and copy it to the clipboard (right click, copy).

6. Go back to the hub you are editing, and insert a photo capsule. Choose the "import tab" and then copy the image URL as shown below. Click "import" and after a moment or two your image will display on the right of the screen. Remember, no attribution is required and so there is no requirement to type anything in "Name of Source" or "Source URL". You may enter a caption for the photo if you wish. And that's all there is to it!

Free Digital Photos is a great place to go on the web to download free images that can be used in your hub projects. Like Morgue File, absolutely no registration is required to search for, or download royalty-free photos and images, plus there is a great selection to choose from.

Free Digital Photos does offer you the option to purchase better quality photos, or photos where no attribution is required, but if you are looking for free, royalty-free photos and don't mind posting an attribution back to the photographer, then this website is an excellent source of images for your hubs. Don't worry about how to do the attribution; I will walk you through the very easy steps.

6 Easy Steps: How to Post an Image from Free Digital Photos

1. Go to http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/.

2. In the top left hand corner of the screen, enter the search keyword and hit "go". Once again, for the purpose of this illustration, I searched on the keyword "rose". The website will return a screen full of matches for your search term; simply pick the image that you like.

3. When you select the image you would like, your download screen appears. You can see from this screen that you have a choice of a free image download, or the option to purchase the image. For the free image download, click on the question mark next to "attribution required". You will need to open up the instructions for correctly attributing this free image to it's creator.

4. I see that for my rose example, I must publish a credit to scottchan, who is the digital artist who created it. For the image you select, you will see similar instructions, although the artist will most likely be different each time. It is therefore important to read these instructions carefully; there are 2 pieces of information you will need to extract and place in the photo capsule in your hub. First you will need the URL link that has been identified for you, and secondly you will need to know who to mention in the attribution.

In my example, the URL link is "http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1701" and I must mention "scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net".

5. Once you have the information you need to hand, you are ready to download the free image to your hard drive by clicking "download" in the "Free Image Download" section. At this stage you will need to confirm that you agree to the websites Terms of Use (by checking the box) and enter a Captcha Code to verify that you are a human user. Click the "download" button under the Captcha Code and the file will instantly download to your hard drive.

6. Finally - the very easy part - go back to the hub you are editing and create a photo capsule. Click "choose photos" and locate and select the downloaded image on your hard drive. While the image is uploading to the photo capsule, enter the 2 pieces of information into "Name of Source", and "Source URL", as in this example. Add a caption if you wish. When you save these changes, you will have successfully posted your free, royalty-free image to your hub with the correct attribution!

The search engine of Every Stock Photo helps you to search for images from a variety of other sources, including Flickr.com, Wikimedia Commons and stock.xchng and so your search results will probably be a lot more varied than Morgue File or Free Digital Photos. Although Every Stock Photo gives you a much wider choice of photos and images, it is important to note that each image is very license-specific. That is to say that you will need to read and understand the attribution licence for each image and follow the instructions before posting it to your hub. But don't worry, I will make this process very simple for you!

6 Easy Steps: How to Post an Image from Every Stock Photo

1. Go to www.everystockphoto.com.

2. In the search box, type in your keyword and hit "go". For this example I am again using the word "rose".

3. Next, make some adjustments in the search options to make it really easy. First, check the box "do not require accounts". Doing so will ensure that you will not be asked to sign up for an account with any website. It just makes things simpler. Secondly, pull down the "Licenses" drop down menu and select "Show only licenses that allow commercial usage". I do this because my hubs are monitized with Adsense and Amazon and so I consider them to be commercial.

4. When you have found an image in the search results that you like, you will be able to download the image and view the attribution license. Be sure that the license tells you that you are free to share and remix the image you have selected, and then make a note of the web page URL. In my example, I must mention the photographer "kalandrakas".

5. To download the image to your hard drive, simply right-click and select "save image to downloads" or "download linked file".

6. Go back to editing your hub and insert a photo capsule. Click "choose photos" to locate and select the downloaded image from your hard drive. Meanwhile, enter the "Name of Source" and "Source Url" as I have done in the example below. Add a caption if you wish. Now that was easy, wasn't it?