I guess we’ve all been through this: you want to liven up a presentation with some nice-to-look-at photos. But most images in commercial databases are much too expensive for your intended purpose or you are unsure about the licensing terms. Getting your smartphone out and quickly taking a photo yourself is usually no option either.
This is where royalty-free photos find their niche. In this blog entry, I will introduce you to the image database Unsplash. Unsplash provides you with ten new, breathtakingly high-resolution photos every ten days. The portal now offers more than 15,000 photos for download.
Royalty-free photos for presentations
All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero terms. This means that you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos free of charge, even for commercial purposes. You do not need to take photos yourself nor ask Unsplash for permission. You do not even need to specify the source. However, for the sake of fairness, I would advocate providing attribution.
Royalty-free images at Unsplash
Finding the right photo quickly
The photos on the site are arranged consecutively underneath each other. To browse through quickly, I would recommend using the “grid” presentation style. In this view the photo previews are smaller, but that allows you to scroll through them faster.
To perform a targeted search for a suitable photo, you can type in a keyword or select a category. I prefer to narrow down by category because I do not need to think of a suitable term. Scrolling through a category for a suitable photo seems easier.
As things stand, the following categories are available at Unsplash
- Buildings
- Food & Drink
- Nature
- Objects
- People
- Technology
Categories at Unsplash
Downloading a high-resolution photo
Under or within each photo, depending on your mode of presentation, is a download link. However, a right mouse click within the image and selecting “Save Target As …” is even easier. Simply select a folder and save the image there.
The name of the photographer is also given below or within each photo. Clicking on this link will forward you to the photographer’s portfolio, where you might find additional, similar shots.
The bottom line
Unsplash makes it easy to find a suitable photo for a presentation. The clearly defined Terms of Use, clarifying that the photos are in the public domain should make you confident that you are on the right side of the law.
What is your experience with image databases? Which can you recommend and which have you found disappointing? I would love to hear about your experiences.
