HOW TO: Use Flickr for free commercial-use photos

Picture by Giuli-O

If you’ve ever needed a good photograph to illustrate something, you may have been frustrated that the usual stock photo sites have returned just the usual stream of polished, cheesy smiles. A lot of people seem to overlook Flickr as an option, which now contains a fantastic array of over 3 billion images, all uploaded by its users.

Until recently Flickr’s search wasn’t too helpful for browsing large numbers of images. Now Flickr has updated their search and presents the results in a nice grid, perfect for browsing. But can you legally use the images you find for commercial purposes?

Creative Commons to the rescue

Well yes, you can, within limits. When looking for images on Flickr, you need to search under the correct licence. Many people put their images onto Flickr with a Creative Commons licence that allows for free, commercial use for any purpose, but not everyone does, so always make sure you check first. Fortunately Flickr has made this easy too, but you’ll need to visit its advanced search to take advantage of it, here:

http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

Once you’re there, fill in what you’re looking for, then scroll down:

Select ‘Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content’, and ‘Find content to use commercially’. If you’re going to be editing the image, and if you’re creating a montage, cutting anything out of it, even just changing the colour-cast of the image, this means you, check ‘Find content to modify, adapt or build upon’ as well.

Then when you’ve found your image, check the exact details of the licence – it’ll be listed on the photo page at the lower right, under ‘Additional Information’, usually as a link labelled ‘some rights reserved’. Click that and you can see how you can use the image. Flickr helpfully lists the types of licence people can choose on the site:

Attribution means:

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial means:

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work – and derivative works based upon it – but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works means:

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike means:

You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

You can read more about Creative Commons here. One of the most important things to remember with Creative Commons is that you’re benefiting from someone’s good will, so always respect their rights and their wishes – that way more people will join in, for yours and everyone’s benefit.

What if the image I want isn’t Creative Commons?

If you see an image you’d really like to use, but it’s not listed under a Creative Commons licence, then the first thing you should do is contact the photographer. They may be willing to let you use it for a fee, an extended attribution line, or some other consideration. If they really don’t want you to use their image, then just move on – there are plenty more images out there.