We touch thousands of presentations and see that many presenters use photographs, artwork, videos, or music found using search engines or from third parties in their presentation. This third-party material requires a license for the particular media. Using copyrighted material can be effective in your presentation, as long as you obtain the appropriate permission in advance. We’ve put together some suggested ideas and sources to help you. This post is not intended to be legal guidance. If you have additional questions, seek your own legal counsel.

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All images you find online are protected by copyright law. Even if the copyright symbol (©) is present or not, the copyright applies. You always need the owner’s permission to use them. Even if the drawing/cartoon/photograph has been published on a web site, in a newspaper or a book—you must get permission. Copyright protects:

• Literary works
• Musical works and accompanying lyrics
• Pantomimes and choreographic works
• Pictorial, graphic and sculptural works
• Motion pictures/Audiovisual works
• Sound recordings
• Architectural works

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If you need some sites to get started with, check these out:

iStock Photo is a great site for images and video files. You can search by price, color or crop (portrait, square, or landscape.)

thinkstock lets you save multiple images in different categories and do batch downloading. You can also have a subscription service that lets you download a set amount of photos per day.

Getty Images and Corbis offer a number of royalty-free images as well as rights-managed images.

iconfinder offers free and fee-based icons. You can easily see the license fees when you hover over an icon.

Remember Clipart? Microsoft Office Online has thousands of free clips to pick from as well.

Many of our designers use Bing Image match. You can upload an image and find sites that have the same or similar image. It’s a great way to find an image you already like on a stock photography site and purchase it directly.

You’ll need to do some work to get the appropriate permissions. Don’t risk a lawsuit. Don’t be unethical. It might take an extra step, but you’ll be covered.

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