Frequently Asked Questions:

Are the images really free?

Indeed they are.

What about the sponsored content from Shutterstock. Are those images free?

Indeed they are not. If you like one, buy it. You will be supporting our effort to bring you millions of high quality public domain images.

Do I have to log in to download the high resolution version of an image.

Absolutely not. Other sites may do this, but we do not see the point of offering free images and then putting up barriers. Your image is a click away.

How do I tell if an image is in the public domain?

If it was explicitly licensed by the author as CC0 or enough time has passed (depending on the laws of your country) then it is in the public domain. You can find a complete discussion on Public Domain Sherpa. Note that just because someone marks an image as CC0 does not make it so. That person must be the author or creator of the work in question.

Are there limitations to using public domain images?

There are no copyright restrictions. However there may be other use restrictions you need to consider. If the image has a person who has not signed a model release, you should be careful. See this article on Fstoppers and another explanation on Pixabay

So all the images on your site are in the public domain?

All of the images on our site were marked as public domain when we acquired them. It is your responsibility to investigate and confirm. Sometimes on flickr or wikipedia, images licenses will be changed. Sometimes it will simply be incorrectly marked as public domain. Please do your homework before uisng an image marked as public domain, especially if it will be used in publication.

How do I trace an image from your search results back to its source?

Click on the image and go to its display page. There we list details about the image. In the section with the icon, you will see the site or sites of origin. Click on the name of the site to go to the image's display page on that site.

Is there anything else I should do when performing due diligence?

A Google reverse image search could also provide more information. A link to perform the search is in the section below the section with the icon.

What does CC0 mean?

CC0 is a public domain dedication and as such is functionally equivalent to being in the public domain. The summary of the license (as of 7/2017) is as follows:

Why do you have a "log in" button on your site?

So you can like or flag pictures, and keep track of your favorite ones. You can log in through your social media account. We do not have access to your password and cannot or will not write anything to your account (where possible, we ask for read only permissions). We do not use the information for any purpose (without asking permission -- and currently we do not have the need) except to identify you. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Is there special syntax to your search?

Some notes on the search:

• If you search for girls swimming, only pictures whose description contain both words will be found.
• If you search for girls or boys swimming, pictures whose description contain both girls and swimming or both boys and swimming will be found.
• If you search for children, girls or boys swimming, then the search will be for (children or girls or boys) and swimming.
• You can have up to 5 terms in an or clause, and commas must be between those words, except the last two which must be separated by an or.
• Full example: people, child, children, girls or boys swimming is ok. people child, children, girls or boys swimming (note the missing comma after people) will also work, but the effect would be the same as child, children, girls or boys swimming people. In other words the people term must be present because without a trailing comma, it is not part of the or phrase.
• You can search for a phrase or an exact word by putting it in quotes: "Red Flower" will be more selective than Red Flower (without quotes) since the first example requires that the two words be next to each other.
• And finally, you can limit your search by the category next to the search box. If only a few pictures are found, the search will be expanded to potentially find more.

May I hot link to your images?

Yes, but be aware that if this is abused, we may change this policy. Please choose an appropriate size and do not hot link to an image that is more than twice the resolution that it will be displayed. Also we reserve the right to (but are currently do not) put a small logo/watermark on images that are hot linked. If you really want the image, downloading it and putting it on your server is the best option.

Who are you?

A guy who likes to build websites. My first was Dogpile. After a long hiatus I built SnappyGoat which is still maintained and going strong. This site is version 2.0 of that effort. Rather than change the look and functionality of SnappyGoat.com, I decided to launch a separate site implimenting my new ideas. It is my sincerest hope you find it useful.

What other services do you provide? Are you for hire?

I have a varied skill set. For this project, I built the machines, installed them at a colocation facility, configured linux and the networking, wrote the crawler, developed the search, built in redundancy, designed the site and wrote the server-side and javascript programs which runs it. This site was built from the processors up solely by me. If you have an interesting project which requires a diverse skill set, I am happy to consider it.

How do I contact you?

info (at) free-images.com.