Wikipedia:Public domain image resources

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This started out as a copy of the master wikipedia page at Meta and its entries should be kept as identical as possible. Please do not make changes to just this copy. If you change both copies please make the changes in the same place.

There are a number of sources of public domain images on the Web.

The presence of a resource on this list does not guarantee that all or any of the images in it are in the public domain. You are still responsible for checking the copyright status of images before you submit them to Wikipedia.

Please read the policy on image use and etiquette at: Wikipedia:Image use policy.

[edit] History

[edit] Historical images

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html Library of Congress American Memory site (Check copyright information for the separate items before deciding to use them!)
http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/ - public domain images of American Political History
http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ngillus.htm Images from The Newgate Calendar. Mostly crimes and criminals from the 18th century. Also other works at http://www.exclassics.com
http://www.fromoldbooks.org/ Collection images scanned from various old books that are now in the public domain. Searchable. Used to be under http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
http://www.john-leech-archive.org.uk/ John Leech sketch archives 1841 until 1864 from Punch magazine The page states they are long out of copyright and that they are believed to be public domain.
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/ Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library's online collection of digital images. Most will be {PD-art}. 90,000 images from rare books and manuscripts, search by keyword.
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org New York Public Library. Over 500,000 images scanned from books. Including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more. There is a per-image usage fee even for public domain images.
http://www.oldbookillustrations.com/ Images scanned from old books. States that images on the site are the works of artists who "...have been dead for over seventy years, which makes them part of the public domain in many countries". Searchable by keywords.
America As It Was - a huge resource for vintage postcards in the U.S., organized by state. Any postcard first published in the U.S. before 1978 without an explicit copyright notice is PD. Lots of photos, aerial views, and maps of many U.S. locations.
"The Secret Museum of Mankind" - collection of anthropological photographs published in a 1935 book without copyright. Scanned and released under a CC-NC license, but images should be public domain, at least in the US, since they are faithful reproductions of PD images. (Warning: strong 1930's racist POV, but some images are probably useful)

[edit] Specific periods

World War II Poster Collection over 300 posters issued by U.S. Federal agencies
Photos of the Great War many images of World War I, scanned in from public domain resources. Slight usage notice, which is probably compatible with GFDL (requires attribution and link, as does GFDL, requests e-mail notice of usage).
The Heritage of the Great War has several colour pictures from World War I (likely all PD, since the effort taken to scan/reproduce them probably fails to qualify for being a derivative work).
World's Armed Forces Forum (gallery for images taken from the French Ministry of Culture's website) hosts more colour images of World War I (likely all PD, since the effort taken to scan/reproduce them probably fails to qualify for being a derivative work).
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/ Child Labor in America 1908 - 1912 by Lewis W. Hine
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum Thousands of on-line, copyright free photographs of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Great Depression and the New Deal, and World War II.

[edit] Art

http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/contents.asp - Images of the works of more than 2,600 realist painters many in the public domain, check catalogue for dates of works and artists.

[edit] Visual arts

Note: Accurate photographs of two-dimensional visual artworks lack expressive content and are automatically in the public domain once the painting's copyright has expired (which it has in the US if it was published before 1923). All other copyright notices can safely be ignored.

[edit] Music

http://www.ibiblio.org/mutopia/

[edit] Books

http://books.google.com - Scanned in books & historical documents. Keyword searchable. Great source for diagrams/illustrations. (not all public domain, many still in copyright)
http://gutenberg.net - Scanned in books. Searchable.
http://www.bookscanning.com - Scanning of public domain books without destroying them. Great source for non-destructible scanning.

[edit] Logos and flags

http://www.wpclipart.com/flags/index.html 436 flags, countries listed alphabetically, also US State flags, historical and others. All in PNG format.
http://www.openclipart.org/
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html CIA World Factbook

[edit] Postage stamps

Eureopeanstamps.net European countries postage stamp images database - editors must check PD stamp templates for which stamps are public domain and which might be acceptable as fair-use.
Commons:Stamps/Public domain

[edit] General collections

http://www.freephotos.lu/ Free public domain photos. For private and commercial use.
RepublicDomain.com is a place for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers.
http://www.public-domain-photos.com - Thousands of high quality public domain photos
Les photos gratuites de GratisNette thousands of free photos for private and non commercial use
Public Domain Pictures - Free high quality public domain pictures for commercial and personal use - Sorted in categories, ability to search by keywords. Todays photographs, no old scanned pictures or low resolution images
Copyright free, high-quality scans from pre-1920 books - Categorized and searchable. Click "free images" on the left navigation.
Public Domain Photos - Free for commercial redistribution and alteration - Moka Gallery - All photo from this site is 100% free for use!
Scans of art from pre-1922 books and various photos, free for any use
Easy Stock Photos - Royalty free stock photos, pictures, images and information in the public domain - Collection of public domain photos organized by category in image galleries.
http://karenswhimsy.com/public-domain-images/ - Scans of engravings and other artwork from a personal collection of old books, magazines, and post cards. Updated regularly.
http://www.wpclipart.com - Public Domain clipart optimized for use in word processors. Browsable via site treeview and thumbnail pages. Complete collection also downloadable from ibiblio.
http://www.burningwell.org - Repository of public domain photos.
http://www.gutenberg.net/catalog/ - Project Gutenberg: 12,000+ books, only a few illustrated, but the number of illustrated books increases from week to week. There are thousands of PD images available.
http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/ - GIMP Archive: 32,000+ Royalty-free photos, organized by keyword.
http://www.openclipart.org/ - This project is an archive of public domain clip art. The clip art is stored in the W3C scalable vector graphics (SVG) format.
http://www.clker.com/ - Easy to search public domain images, directly usable in openoffice.org
http://opendomain.blogspot.com/ - public domain images from various sources in one-a-day blog format.
http://pdphoto.org/ - Large collection of mostly public domain photos. Read the license for each picture before use; also, model releases may not have been obtained for all photos.
http://www.logodesignweb.com/stockphoto/ - Small but growing public domain stock photos released by photographer.
http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/public/public_domain.htm - Scanned and colorised etchings claimed to be PD images.

If any page or image seems missing, replace http://www.sru.edu/depts/cisba/compsci/dailey in its URI with http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/

http://www.freephotos.se/ - Small personal photographic collection dedicated to the public domain.
http://www.mathpuzzle.com/loyd/ Images of pages of a 1914 book of puzzles
http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/sacredspiral/ - Public Domain Pagan Clipart
http://content.lib.washington.edu/costumehistweb/index.html - This collection includes 417 fashion plates from 1806-1914 from some of the leading fashion journals of the time.
http://publicdomain.photopress-spain.com/ - Public Domain Spain Photo Gallery. Photo archive containing a collection of free, public domain images and photos of Spain.
http://www.PublicDomainFootage.com/ - Public domain archival stock footage and newsreels.
http://www.vintagepixels.com/ - Large database of historical, high quality, free-for-use images. People can also share their archived photos.
http://www.pdclipart.org - 25,000+ Public Domain Clip Art (great for printing). Categorized & searchable.
Public Domain Image Gallery Hundreds of categorized photos free for public use. Images added frequently.

[edit] Computer-generated public domain images

http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl US Census Bureau TIGER Mapping service
http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/mapit/ - Automatic public domain map generating program
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/cin/index-e.html - Canadian Illustrated News, 1869-1883
http://www.freeartisticphotos.com - Husac's resource of free artistic photos!(a small and powerfull collection of free photos)

[edit] Public domain image meta-resources

The Best Copyright-Free Photo Libraries -search for images on government sites
http://www.unclesamsphotos.com a detailed directory of the US Government's public domain image galleries
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/links/clipart.html (a lengthy list of categorised links to other public domain image sources, many of those links don't work though)
Clip Art/Public Domain at the Open Directory Project (a list of links to sites with public domain clip art)
http://www.graphicsngraphicdesign.com/freestockphotos-graphicdesigners/
http://images.google.com - this still requires one to check the copyright status of each image.

[edit] Uncategorized links

http://content.cdlib.org/search?style=oac-img;sort=title;relation=ark:/13030/kt5b69q5bc — Oakland Public Library. Not all are PD! The image detail page will state the status, PD images will be clearly marked "Public domain".
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain - Wikisource. Like Wikipedia, tends to be useful from time to time.
nlo's gallery Public domain photos

[edit] U.S. Government sites

http://home.nps.gov/applications/hafe/hfc/npsphoto.cfm - National Park Service
http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml - A portal to US Government images and photos. "Most of these images and graphics are available for use in the public domain"
http://memory.loc.gov/ - U.S. Library of Congress digital image archive. (Some images are still under copyright, so caveat emptor.)
http://images.fws.gov/ - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service imagery, to be relaunched
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/ - NOAA Photo Library
http://images.usace.army.mil/main.html - United States Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library
http://photolibrary.usap.gov/ - Antarctic Photo Library
http://www.usda.gov/oc/photo/opchomea.htm - USDA Online Photography Center
http://photogallery.nrcs.usda.gov/Index.asp - USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Photo Gallery
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/ - USDA Agriculture Research Service Image gallery
http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/nhcorg11.htm Department of the Navy - Naval Historical Center Photographic Section
http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=458&q=162298 Pennsylvania Game Commission Public Photo Gallery (Birds and Mammals)
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/ - DoD Defense Visual Information Center (High-resolution US military imagery; use with {{PD-USGov-Military-DVIC}} license template.)
http://www.defenselink.mil/multimedia/ - Current DoD publicly released image
http://visualsonline.cancer.gov/ -Great resource for electron microscopy and histological images. Includes general biomedical and science-related images, cancer-specific scientific and patient care-related images, and portraits of directors and staff of the National Cancer Institute.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/index.html History of Medicine at the National Library of Medicine. Most but not all of the exhibitions are PD. Clicking on "Metadata" near the bottom of the page will generate a popup window with information that includes Rights usage for each page.
http://nationalatlas.gov Lots of .GIF image maps, such as Congressional District maps, all in the public domain.
http://www.census.gov/pubinfo/www/broadcast/photos/ - U.S. Census Bureau Photo Services; all images in the public domain but a photo credit is requested.
http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov - Congressional sites have a broad variety of public domain images, especially photographs of representatives and senators.
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/pictorial/index.html The Congressional Pictorial Directory, also available in book form.

[edit] Search Engines

everystockphoto.com - Searching over 2.2 million public domain and creative commons photos including wikipedia and NASA. Free user accounts with drag and drop collections, and other features.
PicFindr.com - Searches a hand picked collection of public domain-, free stock photo-, and photo community sites. Includes the ability to search by rights! (whether you need to give credit, ask permission or not)
Spffy.com - Searches one billion stock photos and video, including free images, public domain, creative commons, royalty-free and rights-managed.