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Image Asset Server

Guides

Guides to free images and licences

Every guide starts with a short answer, then explains the details: what a licence lets you do with an image, how to credit it, what NASA and the museums allow, how to pick icons and transparent files, and how to let an AI agent do the searching. They link straight into live searches of 33 image sites and into the curated collections, so you can go from question to image in one click.

Looking for one word? See the glossary. For questions about Image Asset Server itself, see the FAQ.

Licensing

Whether an image may be used commercially, what each licence asks of you, and when people or logos make an image editorial-only.

  • Free images for commercial use: what you can actually use

    You can use an image commercially when its licence says so: CC0 and public-domain images with no conditions, CC BY images with a credit line, and free stock licences such as Unsplash's or Pexels' within their terms. CC BY-NC is non-commercial only, CC BY-ND forbids editing, and CC BY-SA makes an edited version share-alike. The licence covers the copyright only: recognisable people, logos and private property can still need releases in an ad.

    Explainer · 4 questions answered

  • How to credit CC BY images on websites, slides and print

    Name the image, its author, where it came from and its licence with a link, and say if you changed it, for example: “Lake Louise at sunrise” by Jane Doe (Wikimedia Commons), CC BY 4.0, cropped. Put it next to the image (a caption or overlay), or on a credits page or slide that readers can find. Image Asset Server writes this line for every image that needs one.

    How-to · 4 questions answered

  • Museum open access: free public-domain art you can reuse

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art release photographs of their public-domain works under CC0: you may print, crop, recolour and sell them without asking or crediting anyone. Image Asset Server searches all three directly (public-domain works only) and shows the museum, the date and the file sizes, up to full-resolution TIFF for Cleveland.

    Explainer · 3 questions answered

  • Using NASA images: credit, logos and astronauts

    NASA photos are generally not copyrighted in the US, so you may use them commercially with a credit such as 'Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech'. Don't use the NASA insignia or logotype in your branding, don't imply NASA endorses you, and ask NASA before identifiable astronauts or staff appear in an ad. Images credited to partners (ESA, universities, companies) may be copyrighted by them.

    Explainer · 3 questions answered

Production

Picking the right file and format: SVG or PNG, transparent backgrounds, sizes for web and print.

  • Free SVG icons and transparent PNGs: finding and using them

    Search for the subject plus 'icon', 'svg' or 'transparent' (for example 'rocket icon' or 'coffee cup transparent png'): those words become filters. Icons come from open-source sets through Iconify, as SVGs that scale to any size and recolour with CSS. Their licences (MIT, Apache 2.0, ISC, OFL) allow commercial use; keep the set's licence notice. Transparent results sit on a checkerboard so you can see the edges.

    How-to · 3 questions answered

AI agents

How assistants and coding agents can search, vet and fetch images for you.

  • Let an AI agent find and license images for your project

    Add the MCP server (claude mcp add --transport http images https://image.shep.bot/mcp) and ask for what you need: 'a hero image of a mountain lake and three feature icons for the landing page'. The agent calls search_images or build_image_set, which only return commercial-safe images by default, downloads the files and writes the credit lines into ATTRIBUTION.md.

    How-to · 3 questions answered

Ready to look? Search all 33 sites, browse the collections, or read how verdicts are decided.