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Pixabay - images for posts and attribution rights

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 3 Oct 2014, 09:25
From E-Learning V

A post bellow by Cathy Miller below suggests that images from Pixabay are free. I clicked on this to find an image of a brain for my last post. Many of the images in Pixabay are from commercial operations such as Shuttershock ; their images have a great big digital watermark across them and a request to pay a large subscription fee. On the other hand, I did find the image of neurons below that does the job and has the Creative Commons Non-Attribution Distribution rights - i.e. use as you please without the need to link to or attribute the image. No fus, no future problem, just help yourself - I like that.

The easiest way to find the perfect image though is simply to search in Google for an item adding the word 'images' in the search and then click through 'til you find what gets your attention; click on the image and decide if the conditions are onerous. Depending on what you are looking for most are free with a share-alike creative commons, all you are supposed then to do is to link back to the source.

Cathy, do please open your comments on this one and I'll cut and paste this in there.

I see someone has left a comment but no one else can. A very worthwhile discussion as I am a firm believer in using images at the top of most posts just to hook interest and help tell your story.

Pixabay must be an open platform: anyone can contribute images. Perhaps Pixabox are making money by having commercial stock libraries use it too? Flickr is pretty good, but the Google search would include Flickr images anyway.

I have some 2,000 images in five galleries in Google Pics, E-learning I (1000 images, H807, H800),  E-learning II (385 images H808, B822), E-learning III (521 images, H810), E-learning IV (349 images, H809, H818) and E-learning V (Ouverture, once I get started). As well as module specific, even EMA specific galleries, such as H818: The Networked Practitioner. and H818: EMA (29 images,  L120). Grabbed from everywhere, many CCS (share-alike) just about all related to illustrating various MAODE modules over the last four years. However, I've not been meticulous about identifying where the copyright always lies. It's true, that it is irksome, just adding that extra link or creating the correct Creative Contributions copyright tag as an icon - though we ought to do that. There is a bonus for doing so as the links to and from your post and the image host generates traffic but I'd only do that for a commercial blog, which this isn't.

The other thing to do is to draw your own images, saying using the Apps 'Paint' or 'Brushes" or to take or have your own gallery of photographs to use (smart phone snaps, photos) then you will never have a copyright issue as they are yours. The other one is to screengrab images you like and then manipulate them in a App such as 'Studio'. All of this takes time and a blog is a blog, not an article for a magazine don't you think?

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