Images for Creative use - DSGN 102 - 3D Design - Research Guides at Savannah College of Art and Design

Find Images

Google Images is an excellent starting point for exploratory research, but be sure to expand the search further!

Use a SCAD Libraries recommended Image Database.
- These will have high-quality images that will be well-suited for presentations, and come from verifiable sources.
Find the museum or collections that own a certain artwork or style of art.
- This information is sometimes found in Wikipedia or in JSTOR.
- Look for pages or links like "image collections," "online collections," or "digital library" on the institutions website.
Search an artist's name and the phrase "catalogue raisonné" in SCAD Libraries.
- Catalogues raisonnés are comprehensive listings of all known works by an artist, and might include images, and which museum or collection owns the work.

We recommend these image databases:

JSTOR
Database containing full-text articles from scholarly journals and images from institutions around the world covering a variety of subjects.
JSTOR includes digitized articles from back issues of academic journals as well as book chapters, ebooks, abstracts, and primary sources from the humanities and social sciences. For help using JSTOR, search SCAD Libraries' FAQ, or use the chat feature to contact library staff.
Digital Image Database
Image database maintained by the SCAD Visual Resources Center. DID contains a custom array of digitized images for the SCAD community.
The Digital Image Database (DID) contains images from prehistory through the twenty-first century in a wide range of topic categories covering all majors at SCAD. Searches can also be conducted by location, material, media, artistic movements, or artist name. In addition to published work, DID also contains student and faculty work. For help with the SCAD Digital Images Database, search SCAD Libraries' FAQ, or use the chat feature to contact library staff.

The following online image resources are free and publicly accessible:

Sites offer copyright-free images or open license images for reuse.

Getty Open Content
Public domain art images from Getty collections.
NGA Images (National Gallery of Art)
Includes 20,000+ open access digital images, available free of charge for download and use.
Pexels
Free stock images and video browsable by color and collection.
Pixabay
1.9+ million royalty-free stock images with the ability to discover images by category and color.
Unsplash
Over a million high-resolution images to search and browse, from animals to textures to fashion.
Wikimedia Commons
Millions of high-resolution images of art, architecture, design, and more.
Yale University Digital Commons
Images from several museums and collections. Item records indicate when an image is public domain and available for open access and fee-free use.

Freeimages
Exchange for using and contributing free stock images.
MorgueFile Free Photos
Public image archive for creative work
Raw Pixel
Royalty-free stock images as well as high resolution public domain images available for creative reuse.

Looking for more historical clothing, furniture, or architecture? Many museums display these artifacts online, including: