Scientific Images

Paintings and photographs of plants and animals, animal skeletons. Most images are under copyright.

About 500 images of laboratory protocols, methods, and microscopic examinations, primarily for teaching.

Images from Audobon's Birds of North America.

Comprehensive reference covering the life histories of North American breeding birds. Includes images and videos of plumage, behaviors, habitat, nest, and eggs. Contains songs and calls.

About 4500 images from many areas of science. Images have Creative Commons licensing.

Images from national laboratories, relevant to energy. Each lab has its own site. Different labs have different conditions on use, but most of the images are public domain or under Creative Commons licenses.

Images from all areas of earth science. Images are for noncommercial use only -- not even for publication in a subscription scholarly journal.

Images of plants, animals, and other life forms. Most images are protected by copyright.

"Many such images, all located in the “public domain,” are included here, and they are copiously indexed. For the most part, the images have been scanned from volumes to be found in the University of Washington Libraries. The more than 21,000 images were taken from a variety of publications issued between 1735 and 1924."

Photographs of animals, diagrams related to cells and genetics. Most of these images are in the public domain.

Images related to the environment, including diagrams. Licensing is fairly fairly loose as long as you don't sell the images and attribute them.

public domain

Searchable collection of NASA images, including photographs of equipment and images of space. Most of these images are in the public domain.

Searchable collection of images related to the ocean. Most images are in the public domain.

Images related to the oceans and the atmosphere, better for browsing than for searching. Most of these images are in the public domain.

Images related to science from the National Science Foundation's publicity. It includes a mix of public domain and copyright-protected images.

Images from multiple journals on the PLOS platform. These images have Creative Commons licensing.

Images from scientific articles. Scroll down to box on bottom of page to search image captions. Generally these images are copyright protected.

Images from scientific articles in journals on the ScienceDirect platform. Select "Advanced Search" for direct image search. Generally, these images are protected by copyright.

Largely diagrams rather than photographs. Mix of public domain images from the Department of Energy and of images from outside sources that are protected by copyright.

Fish, wildlife, plants, and U.S. lands. Most of these images are in the public domain.

Relatively small collection of images related to agriculture. Images are copyright-free unless otherwise noted.

Images related to geology as well as national parks, natural resources, ecology, and animals. Images are in the public domain unless noted otherwise.

ARTstor is a digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences.