Capturing Creativity Copyright Free
By Natalie Brown
There is no better way to capture the attention of readers than through artistic elements such as images, art pieces, and photos. For writers, images serve as the cornerstone of captivating storytelling, the key to helping audiences visualize our words.
If you are writing an article for publication, such as for Made in Millersville, you will likely want to include images in your article, whether it be a piece of artwork you created or studied for your creative project, or graphs and tables that help to explain complex topics from your scholarly work. We encourage you to use these images in your work because the visual appeal significantly increases audience engagement with your work, and we want your hard work to be read by many!
However, something you may not be aware of is that many images pulled from the internet are subject to copyright. Publications, including Made in Millersville Journal, are open and follow the Creative Commons licensing. This means that we need to ensure all media and images published to the Journal are copyright free or credit is given where it is deserved. This is why I am writing this post, to help you learn how to find and use copyright free images!
Background:
Copyright friendly images, which are also commonly known as public domain images, are images that are not protected by copyright law. This means that users are free to use or modify them in their work without copyright permission from the creator.
Another variety of images you may come across are Creative Commons images. These are licensed images that are protected by copyright law. This means that you do not have permission to use or modify these images in your work, unless you follow specific rules by receiving permission and providing credit to the creator.
For Made in Millersville, we ask that you locate copyright friendly images and provide credit to creators.
How To:
There are a few sites you can pull copyright free images from such as Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels, just to name a few.
However, you can still use Google Images by going to your search bar and looking up your desired image. Once the search has come up:
Click on “Images'' on the top of the toolbar
Then click on “Tools”
After this, select “Usage Rights” and a drop down menu will pop up
If you click on “Creative Commons licenses,” it will take you to images you are free to use
Once you click on an image, “Visit” will pop up under the image, which you can click on to be taken to the image’s website which will inform you if the image is copyrighted or not
Attribution:
Once you have the images you would like to use, you must provide attribution. The easiest way to give credit is by using the TASL method. The TASL method stands for title, author (or creator), source (link to the image), and link (link to the license).
Under the image, you would include this information. If the image was taken by you or someone you personally know, caption the image “used by permission of (the photographer’s name).
Here is a helpful image about copyright licenses from the Ohio State University. I followed the method I outlined above to find this image and through my research, I found that the image belongs to the public domain, meaning I am free to use and distribute it.
I hope this information helped you understand how copyright laws work and how to locate copyright free images for your articles. If you have any questions about the images you wish to use in your article, please don’t hesitate to contact us at madeinmujournal@millersville.edu. We would be happy to answer any questions, or direct you to additional resources.