If you're in need of some stock art or perhaps a bit of visual inspiration for a mood board, the latest thing from Creative Commons ought to be just what you're looking for.
The new CC Search has just come out of beta with a major redesign and faster, more relevant search. It features over 300 million images sourced from multiple collections, so whatever kind of imagery you're after, you should be able to find exactly the right thing with just the sort of CC licence you need.
The new CC Search is packed with useful imagery
Developed by the Creative Commons engineering team, plus a community of volunteer developers, the updated CC Search gets its images from 19 collections. It includes works from museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as posts from Flickr and the cream of Behance and DeviantArt. And if 2D artwork's just a little too flat for you there's also a set of 3D designs from Thingiverse, ready to fire at your 3D printer.
Alongside the bigger collection and faster search, the team at Creative Commons has also been busy improving the general user experience of its search site. There's now a cleaner homepage with better navigation and filters, and Creative Commons has streamlined the attribution process for any images you want to use, with rich text and HTML versions of the attribution text for each version, ready to copy and paste onto your page.
As well as being a great source of useful imagery, CC Search is also a perfect place to find inspiration
It's a great way to find images, no matter what sort of thing you're looking for, and Creative Commons has big plans for its search going forward. It says that it intends to continue to increase the number of items in its library, bringing in work from collections such as Europeana and Wikimedia Commons. It also plans to index other CC-licensed works in its collection, such as open textbooks and audio, later in the year.
Ultimately Creative Commons aims to provide access to all 1.4 billion works in the commons, but this is a pretty good start, all told. You can check out CC Search for yourself here.
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Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.
