The CC0 license is a beautiful thing. Content published under it is released as ‘no rights reserved’ and anyone can use it for anything, be it commercial or otherwise. The only stipulation is that other people may not take the unaltered CC0-licensed work and try to claim it as their own (in other words, they can’t ‘adopt’ it and remove it from the creative common realm). They may however freely edit, manipulate and build upon said content – or even reuse it as is.
One of the most common types of data found in the creative commons is images. There are entire databases that provide free access to CC0 images so that people can use them for their purposes.
Here are some of our favourite resource sites for images:
One of the better-known sites, Pexels provides all sorts of high-quality free images. You can select from different download sizes and even set your own custom dimensions if you want. There is some video content available too, though most of it consists of artistic and well-done photographs of various subjects.
Unsplash offers all sorts of different themed content – wallpapers, textures, stock photographs and more. There are even mock-up templates available if you want to display some of your content in, for example, a laptop mock-up.
Probably the most well-known and biggest source of CC0 images, Pixabay offers a huge library of content, featuring everything from high-quality photographs to drawings, illustrations and more – from cute hand-drawn coffee cups to emotional sunset photographs, you can find just about anything here.
A lesser-known source of images, this site offers some photos that you may not find anywhere else – if you are looking for obscure pictures that not just anyone has on their site or in their work, this might be the site for you. There are all sorts of vector images and photographs available, as well as art content.
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