Wikimedia Commons is a “media file repository” of public domain and freely-licensed educational media content, including images, sounds and video clips. Launched on 7 September 2004 by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Commons uses the “wiki-technology” that is the same technology used in Wikipedia. Wikmedia Commons also aggregates files from other projects, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikispecies, Wikisource, and Wikinews. As of October 2015, there are more than 28.7 million files in more than 120,000 collections. Users can conduct a keyword search or browse the content by topic, type, author, location, license and source.
LUNA Commons is a source for “finding valuable, educational content from digital collections”. It is powered by LUNA Imaging, Inc. The content is contributed by institutions worldwide and presented by the LUNA Browser. Users can search by keyword and narrow the search results by Who, What, When and Where. Users can also browse by various collections available. To take advantage of the advanced features of the LUNA Browser, users can register for an account to customise viewing preferences, create slideshows, search by media or add annotations.
Splashbase.co is an integrated search service that searches for free high-resolution photographs from various sources. As of September 2015, users can search for close to 4,000 images.
Using the Flickr API, Foter is a search engine for more than 190 million Creative Commons images from varied sources. Users can search images by keywords or browse them by categories. Images can be obtained by downloading or through the provided embed codes of various sizes.
Launched in 2006, Everystockphoto is an image search engine that “index and search millions of freely licensed photos”. Users can search for millions of images and filter by different types of licenses: Free Licenses, Public Domain or Creative Commons. The platform also provides an advanced search option that allows users to search by tags, shapes, resolution or sizes.
Powered by the TinEye MultiColourEngine API, Multicolr Search Lab allows users to search from “20 million Creative Commons images on Flickr” using colours. Users can select up to 5 different colours to search and refine their searches with tags.
From vectors to PSD files, icons and stock photos, Freepik provides resources for graphic and web design. As of August 2015, the site has received more than 440 million downloads. Developed by “a team of designers, developers, professionals of marketing, communication and administration” based in Spain, Freepik offers two types of content: free and exclusive graphic resources by Freepik, and graphic resources belonging to others. Users can search or browse by categories.
Compfight is an image search tool developed to “locate images for blogs, comps, inspiration, and research”. The platform uses the Flickr APIs, but is not affiliated with Flickr.
Launched in 2008, Europeana is a multilingual web portal that aggregates items from galleries, libraries, archives and museums in Europe. Users can search and explore millions of objects that range from books and manuscripts to photos and paintings, television and film, sculpture and crafts, diaries and maps, and sheet music and recordings.
