Use royalty-free images for free: How to make it work

The Internet is full of millions of images. But by no means all of them are available for free for further use. Usually, you have to buy a license to use them. However, several websites offer royalty-free images that you can use for free.

Free, royalty-free images are available in abundance on the Internet.

Find and use royalty-free images for free

The license of images is determined individually by the rights holder. For this reason, there are many images that are legitimized for free use. You can find license-free images on all kinds of platforms, such as Pixabay or Pexels. If you are looking for a specific image, then Google search can also help you.

1. Start an image search on Google. To do this, enter a keyword in the search box and select "Images" in the menu bar.
2. Then click on "Settings" and then "Advanced Search".
3. There you can set the crucial option at the very bottom of "Usage Rights". For example, select "Creative Commons License". Would you like to use the images for commercial purposes select "Commercial and other licenses".
4. Once you have made your selection, click on the "Advanced Search" button.
5. After that, you will be shown the matching results.

Big image platforms such as flickr.com or Fotolia also offer this option. It is clear that the selection of free, royalty-free images is never as large as the selection of commercial images. Still, you can find good free images on many topics. So you can cleverly use the sheer size of the Internet to save money.