At JeaP.co.uk, we get a lot of requests for T-shirts with images on.
Most of the time our clients provide their own photograph, which is of course copy write free.
So, what do you do, it you need an image for your shirt, that you did not take the photograph of?
Firstly, what a lot of our client’s don’t realise is that to just ‘borrow’ an image from the internet or someone else’s website is actually illegal. Secondly, by lifting an image directly from the internet the quality tends to be quite poor. Internet images are low resolution, designed to upload quickly on the net, for print purposes, we require good quality high resolution images.
Be careful, one of our client’s spent a lot of time and money having her catalogue photographed, put it up on her website, only to find that a competitor had come along and swiped the majority of the images for his own site, short of taking him to court there was nothing she could do.
However if you’re the one swiping and you manage to swipe a big companies images and they find out, then you really will not have a leg to stand on and will find yourself owing a lot of money!
Our advice, use stock imagery for your shirts, e-mails, blogs and websites. However, buying all of those images online can be expensive, so what’s the alternative?
Check out some of our favourite sites for free stock imagery that are safe to use, here are some of the best.
Firstly try www.Morguefile.com – a free public image archive for creatives by creatives. I did a few searches on this site and there were a lot of great quality images available to use on shirts and blogs etc. for free. A site that is definitely worth checking out!
Another firm favourite is www.sxc.hu. They have close to 394,000 photos available online that you can use for free.
One more tip if you register with www.istockphoto.com (which is free to do), you can download their free picture every week. This is a great way to build up a collection of images.
For free clip art and some vector images try www.clker.com.
Note: Always check the sites terms and conditions to make sure that your specific use of the photos or artwork does not violate their policies. It is your responsibility to make sure you are following their rules.