User:John Cummings/notes
This simple guide will take you through the process of using the images, sound and video clips on Wikimedia Commons free of charge for any purpose, including commercially.
All images in this guide are available on Wikimedia Commons, all credits, licenses and sources can be found by clicking on an image. A more in depth guide on reuse of content can be found here.
Wikimedia Commons only hosts content that is freely licensed, or is in the public domain. All media files on Wikimedia Commons can be used by anyone for any purpose including commercially and each media file has information about which license it uses. The most common licenses used are created by Creative Commons. To find out more about Creative Commons licenses please go to creativecommons.org
Photography competitions
Wikimedia runs a number of photography competitions on different themes where many high quality freely licensed images are created, these include:
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Picture of the Year: A small selection of the very highest quality images available on Wikimedia Commons: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012. |
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Featured pictures: Excellent quality images on a wide range of subjects. Click more at the bottom of each section to see the full range of high quality images for that subject. |
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Wiki Loves Earth: an annual international photo contest of protected natural sites, best images from: 2016, 2015, 2014 |
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Wiki Loves Monuments: an annual built cultural heritage photo competition, the largest photography competition in the world. Best images from 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012. |
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Wiki Loves Africa: An African photography competition with a different theme each year, best images from 2015: (Cultural Fashion and Adornment), 2014: (Cuisine). |
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European Science Photography Competition: A wide range of science photography including: people in science, microscopy images, sets and a general science category:. Best images from 2015 |
Search
If you are looking for an image on a specific subject that is not covered by any of the competitions you can use the search box which is located in the top right of every page on Wikimedia Commons. Simply enter the subject you would like to search in the same way as other content libraries e.g Flickr or Youtube. To refine the search to only include images that have been assessed as high quality you can include this phrase after your search term:
incategory:Featured_pictures_on_Wikimedia_Commons|Quality_images
e.g to search for high quality images of World Heritage Sites use this phrase:
World Heritage Sites incategory:Featured_pictures_on_Wikimedia_Commons|Quality_images
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Clicking on a file within the search results will provide a page similar to the one above, if you see a different kind of page simply click on Open in Media Viewer below the file.
1. Click on the download icon in the bottom right hand corner of the page.
2. Click on Download original file to download the highest resolution version available.
3. Click on You need to attribute the author show me how and copy the text provided, you can choose between Plain (used for printed materials etc) and HTML (for web).
Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia: a more in depth guide on using content.
Creative Commons Search: a tool allowing you to search a range of sources for free content including large media archives like Flickr.
Wikimedia Commons help index: more information on Wikimedia Commons.
Creative Commons, best practices for attribution: Further information on crediting Creative Commons images.
Wikimedia Commons is a media archive that makes over 30 million files of freely licensed and public domain educational media content available to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a central archive for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation including Wikipedia, but is available for anyone to reuse. The repository contains content from both organisations and individuals and is created and maintained by volunteers.
Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world. Through various projects including Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia strives to bring about a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.