Skip to Main Content

Find Art & Design Images

What is Fair Use?

Digital images may be used by educators, scholars, and students for:

  • Display in connection with non-commercial lectures and presentations, including those for professional development
  • Workshops and conferences in the education field
  • Reproduction in an academic course assignment
  • Public display of academic student work undertaken as part of a course for which the student is registered
  • Retention of images used in academic work in personal portfolios for such purposes as graduate school and employment applications

What is Not Fair Use?

Digital images generally may not be used for:

  • Reproduction and publishing in publications, including scholarly publications
  • Creation of derivative works, or manipulation of digital images into new digital works of art

Seek Permission

Image Permissions

On the Internet, copyrighted works are often used without proper authorization. Many works of art in digital form are protected and easily tracked by rightsholders.

A digital image can be an original, a reproduction, a published reproduction, or a copy of a published reproduction.

Examples:

  • Original - original digital artwork created with Web graphics/authoring tools
  • Reproduction - copy of an artwork
  • Published reproduction - a digital image that reproduces a work of art and is accessible from a public Web space
  • Copy of published reproduction - a 35mm slide that is a copy of a work in a book; a printout of an image from ARTstor