Google Images or Google Images is the search engine specialized in graphic content . Integrated into Google itself, it helps us get photos of kittens or celebrities to make memes. Well. That and so much more. Thanks to this powerful search engine, you will find photos and illustrations to add to a document or to your website. That includes royalty-free images on and off Google.
On the one hand, you can search by keyword or uploading an image to find similar results. You can also use your voice. And on the results page, you will be able to refine the search with related results and with filters of size, color, type, date and use rights.
Precisely, thanks to the Google Images usage rights filter, you will have it a little easier to find royalty-free images on Google. Photographs, drawings and illustrations by authors that allow their dissemination. Sometimes it will be enough to mention the original source . In other cases, not even that.
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Let’s say you want to publish an article on your personal page by collecting photographs of a topic of interest to you. To avoid problems with their authors , it is advisable to look for royalty-free images. Google helps you with the filter that we mentioned before.
When you do a search from Google Images or Google Images, you get previews of the results according to your search. Thanks to the filters you can filter by large images, narrow by color or differentiate photos from illustrations and GIF animations.
But the filter that interests us is Rights of use . By default, it shows all images. But we can only show content with “Creative Commons Licenses” or “Commercial and other licenses”.
Although this Google Images filter works well in most cases, it does not hurt to check if the chosen image is really royalty-free. When you access the original publication page, you will see if that page has a Creative Commons tag or instead indicates the author of the image.
On some occasion, Google is leaked images with media use rights that clearly show the authorship of the same. Sometimes the source comes from stock image sources . These sources usually clearly indicate the type of license to use. The same goes for pages like Flickr or 500px , which link the license and author mention recommendations if applicable.
Creative Commons and other licenses
As we have seen before, if you need royalty-free images, Google will mark them as “Creative Commons Licenses”. In the preview, add a watermark with “Licensed”. This indicative guarantees that this image is published under a Creative Commons license or similar.
Normally, this license is very permissive , but you have to look at the specific conditions of use. Each author personalizes them to their liking. Some ask for mention and how that mention should be. Others simply ask that it not be used for commercial purposes or for certain purposes, such as policy or advertising for certain products. And others, directly, do not ask for anything. You can use it without further ado.
For its part, what Google Images classifies as “Commercial licenses and other licenses” refers to the usual use licenses. Come on, those photographs have an author behind them. And if you want to use them, you will have to see if they have a dissemination policy. Sometimes you will have to contact the author to agree on the use of that protected content.
