Download Free Web Graphics

From LoveToKnow Web-Design

Everybody wants the Internet to be free, and the ability to download free web graphics is no exception. While it is certainly easy to create images using programs such as PhotoShop, the ability to create good images is not so common – and with the standards of web design getting higher every day, it's a mistake to simply throw up unprofessional looking images.

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How NOT to Download Free Web Graphics

While Picasso may have said that bad artists copy and good artists steal, the fact is that it is as illegal as it is easy to simply copy people's images off of a web page. In most cases it's as easy as "right-click→save as" and the image is downloaded to your hard drive.

The fact is, though, this is illegal. Every picture that is created has a copyright that belongs to the person who created it (or their agency). Even if the picture doesn't specifically say "copyright" it is implicitly there – and therefore, the picture cannot be used without permission, anywhere, for any reason other than Fair Use (that is usually for purposes of review, satire, and a few other very specific exception).

So the easiest way to download free web graphics is exactly the way you should not download free web graphics. Happily, there are other resources.

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Clip Art Magnet Pages

Doing a Google search for "download free web graphics" will get you thousands of hits – most proclaim "the best resource for free graphics" or the like, and most of them are actually truth in advertising: they do have huge libraries of web graphics, and they are, technically, free. But how could anyone afford to simply give away high-quality web graphics?

The answer is: Tey can't. And while they may be full of images that yes, you can right-click and use for free, the sites are almost without exception advertising sinkholes, designed specifically to force you to click through page after page looking for tiny, minimum-resolution images (or sometimes fragments of images) surrounded by banner ads, text ads, and every other click-through money maker the site designers could come up with.

It is true that on occasion there is the perfect graphic for your project hiding there in the morass of bad design and advertising. Usually, though, the time and effort to find it makes it more expensive than it's worth in ways other than monetary.

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Microsoft to the Rescue

Thankfully, there are other more reputable resources to download free web graphics such as Microsoft Office Online's Clipart and Media home. While it does still feature some of the advertising for both Microsoft and some partners such as Fotolia and iStockphoto, the site also contains thousands of images and graphics that can be used on a web page just as easily as they can be used in a Word document.

Even better, when they say "high quality" they mean it: Most images are downloadable at 150 dpi or better, which means they can easily be scaled up or down depending on the needs of your web design. Best of all, the images are all licensed to be used for anything – commercial, personal, non-profit – and so there are no rights to be purchased or worried about.

The site also contains links to other resources such as iStockphoto. This site is designed to sell photos and graphics, and is certainly one of the best on the web (full disclosure: The author uses iStockphoto regularly to illustrate articles and blogs). But one feature of the site is a regularly rotated "free image" – a very high quality image that is given away. Simply visiting this site regularly – and other like Fotolia that also offer similar features – will enable you to download free web graphics until your portfolio is full.

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Creative Commons

Another resource that should be mentioned is the Creative Commons concept. This is a version of copyright written to enable artists to specifically allow various uses of their work – for example, they can say their image is free to download and use as long as it's non-commercial, or as long as they are attributed as the creator. Many artists and writers and musicians have taken exactly this strategy, and a visit to the [Creative Commons website can yield a goldmine of resources to download free web graphics and more.

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