"Carte des bayes, rades et port de Plaisance dans l'Isle de Terre-Neuve", from the Library of Congress

Working with Photoshop often involves working with photos – modifying, manipulating, or mashing them together. You can use your own photos, but sometimes you will want to find other sources of photos to work with.

The web is a limitless source of images – you are probably familiar with Google Image Search. However, when searching for photos which you intend to make use of in your own work, it is a good idea to try to find images that you have permission to use. A good way to do this is to search for images that are public domain or are licensed for reuse.

Public domain refers to intellectual work (such as writing and art) for which the property rights have expired or been forfeited, which means that anyone is free to use the work as they please.

You may have heard of Creative Commons, which is a way for creative people to specify how they want to allow their work to be reused. Some Creative Commons works can be used without restrictions, while others are free for non-commercial use only, or require attribution. Flickr has a Creative Commons page with links to images licensed in this way. You can also use Google Advanced Image Search to restrict your search to images that are labelled for reuse.

Here are some other sources of high-quality images that you can use:

• morgueFile is a “public image archive for creatives by creatives”.
• The Library of Congress’s American Memory collection focusses on American historical images, but contains others as well, such as the map of Placentia Bay above.
• Pixabay is a collection of high-quality public domain photos.
• Wikimedia Commons is a huge repository of media files which anyone can use.
• Wikipedia: Public domain image resources contains an extensive list of links to archives of public domain images, including historical photos and paintings.
• Public Domain Sherpa has a great list of sources of public domain photos.
• WebMuseum has many high-quality images of famous artworks.
• Ars Publik is a limited but high-quality collection of public-domain images.