Tag Archives: Creative Commons

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New Creative Commons image search – back to the drawing board I’m afraid

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Locating images that can be re-used, modified and incorporated into commercial or non-commercial projects is always a hot topic on my search workshops.  As soon as we start looking at tools that identify Creative Commons and public domain images the delegates start scribbling. Yes, Google and Bing both have tools that allow you to specify a license when conducting an image search but you still have to double check that the search engine has assigned the correct license to the image. There may be several images on a webpage or blog posting each having a different copyright status and search engines can to get it wrong. Flickr’s search also has an option to filter images by license and there are sites that only have Creative Commons photos, for example Geograph.  But the problem is that you may have to trawl through several sites before you find your ideal photo.

Creative Commons has just launched a new image search tool that in theory would save a lot of time and hassle.  You can find some background information on the service, which is still in beta, at Announcing the new CC Search, now in Beta. The search screen is at http://ccsearch.creativecommons.org/.

The Creative Commons collections are currently included in the search come from the Rijksmuseum, Flickr, 500px, New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  You can search by license type, title, creator, tags and collection.

CC Image Search screen As well as search there are social features that allow you to add tags and favourites to objects, save searches, and there is a one-click attribution button that provides you with a pre-formatted text for easy attribution. There is also a list creation option. To make use of these functions you need to register, which at present can only be done via email.

I started with a very simple search: cat

CC Image Search on cat

Hover over the image and you have options to Save to a list and to favourite it. It will also show you the title of the image and who created it. Click on the image and you are shown further information including tags together with a link that takes you to the original source.

Image information and tags

So far, so good although I did think it rather odd that the image should have tags for both norwegian forest cat and nebelung but assumed that perhaps the cat was a cross between the two.

I decided to narrow down the search to norwegian forest cat, and this is where things started to go very wrong. There were a handful of cats but the rest seemed irrelevant. I put the terms inside quotation marks “norwegian forest cat”. It made no difference.

CC Search Norwegian Forest Cat

I had a look at one of the non-cat images and the reason it had been picked up was that the creator called themselves Norwegian Forest Cat! So I unticked the options on the search screen for creator and title, leaving just the tags.  At least the results were now cats  but most did not look anything like norwegians.

CC Image search Norwegian Forest Cat in tags

I looked at the tags for one of the short haired mogs.

CC Image tags

It seems that this is a very special creature. It is both a domestic long haired cat and a domestic short haired cat, a norwegian forest cat and a manx, a european shorthair and an american short hair.  The creator of this photo must have had a brainstorm when allocating the tags, or perhaps Flickr’s automatic tagging system had kicked in? It does sometimes come up with truly bizarre tags.  I clicked through to Flickr to view the original.

Flickr tags

The original tags were very different. The two sets had only cat, pet, and animal in common. I have no idea where the tags on the CC photo page had come from and could not find any information on how they had been assigned.  This was repeated with all of the dozen images that I looked at in detail.

I decided to give up on cats and try one of my other test searches: Reading Repair Cafe. I know that there are about 75 images on Flickr that have been placed in the public domain. I know that because I took them. To make it easier on CC Search I choose to search titles and tags, and just the Flickr Collection. The results were total rubbish.

Looking at the details of the photos it became clear that CC Search is carrying out an OR search. Phrase searching did not work and using AND just created a larger collection of irrelevant images. (I confess I gave up after trawling through the first 12 pages). After the cat experience I checked the tags on a few photos but no sign of  Reading Repair Cafe anywhere.

A search on Flickr and using the license filter worked a treat:

Flickr Reading Repair Cafe

Google did a pretty good job too but to get perfect results I had to do phrase search.  (Note: as this is a regular test search of mine, I signed out of my Google account and went “Incognito” to stop Google personalising the results. )

Google Image Search Reading Repair Cafe

Bing also did an excellent job at finding the photos.

Admittedly, CC Image Search is a prototype and in beta so one would expect there to be a few glitches. However, glitches seem to be the norm. I ran several more tests and the main stumbling block is that it combines terms using OR. There is no other option or any commands one can use to change that. My second concern is where on earth do the tags on the CC Search photo pages come from? Most of them do not appear on the original source page and many are completely wrong. I’m afraid it is back to the drawing board for CC Search.

Bing, Google, images

Bing adds Creative Commons search to images

Bing has added public domain and Creative Commons options to its image search but only if it thinks you are in the US. This is a feature that Google has long offered as part of its image advanced search but Bing have only recently added it as an option. If you are looking for an image to include in a presentation, article or promotional literature you have to make sure that the copyright license allows you to do that. Get it wrong and you could be on the wrong end of a very expensive law suit (Bloggers Beware: You CAN Get Sued For Using Pics on Your Blog http://www.roniloren.com/blog/2012/7/20/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-for-using-pics-on-your-blog.html). Images that are in the public domain give you free rein to do whatever you want with them but it can be difficult to find photos that match your requirements. You may have more luck with Creative Commons images.

Bing image search now has an option to restrict your search to a specific license, but only if you are using the US version of the search engine. For those of us outside of the US we have to change our ‘country/region’. Bing frequently introduces new search options that are only available on the US version. They obviously think that the rest of the world is irrelevant.

BingCogWheel

On Bing’s home page you should see in the upper right hand corner of the screen a ‘Sign in’ option and a cog wheel. Click on the wheel to go to the settings page where you will see an option to change your location. Click on ‘Change your country/region” and select ‘United States- English’. Then head off to Bing images.

Run your search and running across the top of the results page you should see a menu with ‘License’ at the end of it. Click on this and a drop down menu will appear with options such as ‘Public domain’, ‘Free to share and use’, ‘Free to modify, share and use commercially’.

BingImagesLicense

Select the license you need and only images with that license will be included in the results. In the example below I have run a search on Caversham, which is where I live, and selected the ‘Free to share and use’ license. The results include one of my own Flickr photos of Queen Anne’s school.

BingImagesFreetoShareUse

I have a major problem with the terminology used by Bing to describe some of the licenses, and it is also a problem with Google. Misunderstanding the terms of the license could land you in serious trouble and both Bing’s and Google’s descriptions can be confusing and misleading. ‘Free to modify, share and use commercially’ is straightforward. You can modify the image, share it and even use it as part of commercial publication, brochure, website or whatever. But what about ‘Free to share and use’? I often run this one past people in my workshops and seminars, many of whom are not familiar with copyright. Usually, their immediate response is that they can share and use it however they want, even commercially. Then there might be a pause and someone will ask “What’s the difference between that license and ‘Free to modify, share and use commercially”. A great deal, and a substantial dent in your finances if someone decides to sue you for copyright infringement, but to most people it is not obvious. It wasn’t obvious to me the first time I saw the options! ‘Free to share and use’ is only allowed for non-commercial purposes. Is it so difficult to add ‘non-commercial’ to the description?

Always click through to the original source of the image. If it is a Flickr photo the copyright license will be clear. My photo of Queen Anne’s school is indeed Creative Commons free to share and use, but non-commercially and with attribution (you are required to credit me as the photographer). You may also find that the license that Bing or Google indicates is associated with an image may not be correct. On many occasions I have identified, via Google, an appropriately licensed image for a presentation or paper only to discover that it was ‘all rights reserved’ and that the Creative Commons license referred to another image on the page. If in doubt, ask. And if you cannot identify who is responsible, or they do not respond to your emails then do not use it.

If you are wondering where Google’s image license options are, they are on the advanced search screen. You first have to run your search in Google images and then click on the cog wheel in the upper right hand area of the results page.

GoogleImagesAdvanced

Select ‘Advanced search’ and on the next screen go down to almost the bottom of the page and ‘Usage rights’. Click on the downward pointing arrow next to ‘not filtered by license’ and select the license you require. By the way, ‘not filtered by license’  does not mean public domain – it covers every image that Google has indexed regardless of whether it is all rights reserved or completely free to use.

GoogleImagesLicense

And finally, if the perfect image for your project is all rights reserved do not despair. Contact the owner of the photo. If it is a worthy project or a local community cause they may give you a free license.

Flickr, images

Compfight – quick and easy way to search Flickr

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Compfight (http://www.compfight.com/) was recommended to me by a couple of people at the Open University.  It searches images on Flickr and has an option for Creative Commons images. Next to the search box you can switch between Creative Commons Only, Creative Commons Commercial and Creative Commons Off. The results are displayed as thumbnails and you simply click on an image to go to the original image page on Flickr.

Compfight

This is a very quick and easy way to search and preview Flickr photos with Creative Commons licenses, but do check the license of the image on its original Flickr page. There are several CC licenses with different levels of permissions and for all but one of them you are required to acknowledge the photographer.

Google, images, Search Engines

Free-to-use images might not be

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You may have already read that Google now includes a creative commons license filter option in its Advanced Image search screen. Creative Commons is a series of licenses that can be applied to a variety of works such as images, video and PowerPoint presentations and they specify what you can and cannot do with those works. Information on the licenses can be found on the Creative Commons web site at http://www.creativecommons.org/.

Google does not use the CC terminology but has instead generated a pull down menu with the options: labelled for reuse, labelled for commercial reuse, labelled for reuse for modification,  and labelled for commercial reuse for modification.

GoogleCCImages

There is another option at the top of the list that is the default: not filtered by license. I had to think twice about this one because my first thoughts were that this was for public domain images. It is not. The “not filtered” option is all images. I ran the license options past a few people over the past week and they all immediately assumed that the default option is for images that you can use as you want.  A couple, though, then asked how “labelled for reuse” differed from this and then they became totally confused by the whole thing. To make it worse,  the licenses as listed by Google do not cover all the possible CC license conditions, for example attribution and share alike. So once you have done your search you still have to check the full license for the image that you wish to use. Furthermore, very few people are aware that you have to cite the license and any attribution as requested by the author.

Google says in its help files:

“By returning these search results, Google isn’t making any representation that the linked content is actually or lawfully offered under a Creative Commons license. It’s up to you to verify the terms under which the content is made available and to make your own assessment as to whether these terms are lawfully applied to the content.”

The accuracy and validity of the Google implied license was raised recently in The Register: The tragedy of the Creative Commons . It comments:

“Since there’s no guarantee that the licence really allows you to use the photo as claimed, then the publisher (amateur or professional) must still perform the due diligence they had to anyway. So it’s safer (and quicker) not to use it at all.”

I disagree with that: I recommend using it as a first level filter but then check with the original web site regarding the details of the license. At least you won’t be spending hours wading through “all rights reserved” images.

If you do use the license filter you will notice that many of the photos come from Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo!. Yahoo! has had a Creative Commons filter on its Image Advanced Search screen for a long time but only on the US site, not the UK. A far better way of searching CC Yahoo images is to go straight into Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/.  This gives you a description of the different licenses and you can search images assigned that license. This assumes, of course, that the person who has uploaded the image is the owner of that image and there are stories that this is not always so. But how paranoid do you have to be? With respect to Flickr my approach is to take the photographer’s word for it unless there are serious inconsistencies in their photostream, for example the  meta data associated with the photos suggests that they were in Armenia, New Zealand and Peru on the same day!

So where do you go for images that really are free to use.  There is a trick you can use in Google  to pull up just public domain images. Carry out your search on the standard Image search screen and when the results come up add

&as_rights=cc_publicdomain

to the end of the string in your br0wser address bar, and press enter. (Thanks to Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land for this tip) . The test searches I have tried so far come up with photos from NASA, US government sites and Wikimedia Commons.  NASA is a safe bet for public domain images as are US government web pages, although there are a few exceptions but these are clearly labelled with any copyright restrictions.. A recent spat between Wikimedia Commons and the UK’s National Portrait Gallery  – National Portrait Gallery bitchslaps Wikipedia: Hands off our photos! – has thrown suspicion on the validity of CC and public domain licenses attached to its photos. This appears to have been an isolated incident, though, and the high resolution images have now been removed if you are accessing the site from the UK.

Another source of public domain images is MorgueFile, which is a small database of high resolution photos but you may have to play around with your search terms before you find exactly what you want.

If you are looking for photos of buildings or locations in the UK then head straight for Geograph.  This aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland. Anyone can upload photos provided that they adhere to the guidelines and attach a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Geograph has saved me so much time. A few months ago I was trying to find a photo of the Great Expectations pub in Reading, Berkshire. Google, Yahoo and Live (now Bing) insisted on giving me photos of people reading a copy of  Charles Dickins’s Great Expectations  while sitting in a pub in Berkshire. The image I wanted was probably somewhere in the list but I was not prepared to trawl through hundreds of results to find it. I typed in Great Expectations Reading into Geograph and I was there in a couple of seconds. Brilliant!

GeographGreatExpectations

If you are interested in finding out more about finding and using images head for JISC Digital Media – Still Images.