It depends.
When you’re looking for images to include in your resource, it’s tempting to turn to Google images. Don’t do it. Just because you can access an image for free doesn’t mean you’re free to reuse it in your TPT resources. It’s important to know whether the person who owns that image allows folks to use it, and what uses they allow.
The key is to make sure that you have the right to use anything you include in your resources. That includes photographs, clip art and other images, borders and other design elements, and so on.
As always, your safest bet is always to use only things you’ve created yourself, but we know that’s not practical for everyone. We can’t all be clip artists and font designers as well as amazing teachers and authors.
Fear not! We’re here to help. As luck would have it, the TPT Seller Community is full of amazing clip artists, font and border designers, photographers, and other artists offering their work to the TPT community. You can find tons of high quality stuff right here, both free and priced, to help you make your resources look polished and professional.
There are also lots of other websites of image and clip art libraries. It can be tough to know which sites to trust, and how to navigate their licensing rules, so it’s good to be cautious and read carefully. We’ve done some research for you and found a few sites you might want to check out.
Free/Public Domain:
- New York Public Library (Public Domain Digital Collection)
- Library of Congress Prints & Photographs catalog (Many of these images are stated to be in the public domain, although it's important to make sure you're reading the description for each image you want to use. The LOC does not make any guarantees about its rights assessment.)
Subsciption-Based/Pay-Per-Image:
If you want to check out more information on copyright and trademark topics, check out our Copyright & Trademark section in TPT U, and consider taking our Copyright & Trademark Quiz!