Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet

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1 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet D 600 / 1 Millions of Free Graphics and Images at Your Fingertips! Discover How To Get Your Hands on Them Almost any type of document you create can benefit from a well-chosen image or two, from a simple letterhead to more complex newsletters, flyers, brochures and websites. Unfortunately, it takes skill or talent to create what you need, and we re not all well-stocked in the artistic department! Once again, though, the Internet comes to our rescue, offering immense collections of free graphics and photographs, and in this article I ll show you where to look and how to download images to your PC for your own use. By Don Levison Quick and Simple: Saving a Picture from a Web Page... Finding Pictures at Google Image Search... Browse Virtual Libraries for that Perfect Picture... How To Use Your Favourite Free Pictures as Desktop Wallpaper... Windows All D 600 / 3 D 600 / 4 D 600 / 6 D 600 / 9 This article shows you how to:... Save pictures you find on web pages... Find high-quality photos at stock libraries... Choose new wallpaper pictures for your desktop 23

2 D 600 / 2 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet Downloading pictures is legal (and unavoidable) There may be restrictions on how you use them 24 Downloading Pictures from Websites Is It Legal? I m sure you ve guessed already that the topic of this article throws up some legal issues, so let s deal with those before we go any further. The act of downloading pictures (or anything else for that matter) to your own computer causes no legal problems at all. If it did, we would all be in trouble every time we visited a web page, because in order to display the contents of the page your web browser has to download it to your computer first! You re probably not aware of this because all those pages and pictures are stored away inside a hidden folder (and removed automatically within a few weeks). Nevertheless, by visiting a web page you re downloading what it contains. The question of legality comes up in relation to how you use what you find. The person who created the picture or photograph owns the copyright in it, and they don t lose ownership when they put the picture on a website. Therefore, it s important to remember that any picture you find belongs to someone else. Unless the owner says otherwise, you shouldn t use it in business or commercial publications, include it on your own website, pretend you created it yourself, or (of course!) sell it. However, personal use should be fine using it within your personal letterheads, as desktop wallpaper, and so on. In addition, as I ll show you later in this article, many artists and photographers are happy for their work to be used in almost any way you like. Copyright is a thorny issue, and it s sometimes difficult to know where to draw the line between

3 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet D 600 / 3 reasonable and unreasonable use. If in doubt, perhaps it s helpful to imagine that you created a picture and found that someone else was using it the way you re planning to. Quick and Simple: Saving a Picture from a Web Page If you come across a picture on a web page and you d like to save it to your own PC, the steps could hardly be simpler. Just right-click it to display the context-menu pictured in the next screenshot and choose Save Picture As. A familiar-looking dialog will appear, letting you choose where to save the picture and what to name it. By default, the picture would be saved in your Pictures (or My Pictures ) folder, but you can pick a different folder or your desktop if you d prefer. Right-click a picture to save it Right-click a picture on a web page Choose Save Picture As Pictures are often used as backgrounds on web pages either a single picture for the entire page, or different pictures as backdrops for different sections of the page. Saving the background picture used in a page or section is similar: right-click a blank space on the Web page backgrounds can be saved too 25

4 D 600 / 4 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet background, rather than any text or smaller pictures laid over the top, and you ll find a Save Background As item on the context menu: click that item to save the background picture. 26 This method is used at some picture libraries Use Google to search for images Sometimes you can see a picture but you can t tell whether your browser will regard it as a picture or a background. Luckily that doesn t matter: just right-click it and see which of the two Save options mentioned above is presented. The tips above are useful if you come across a good picture during casual travels around the Internet, but they re worth remembering when you visit online picture libraries and picturesearch sites too. Although some sites may provide an obvious Download or Save button alongside their images, others will simply display the picture on the page and assume you know how to save it. Finding Pictures at Google Image Search When you re looking for a particular type of picture, aimless wandering between websites in the hope of finding something suitable isn t the best approach! Wouldn t it be better to type a few words that describe what you re looking for and then pick through the results? Well, thanks to search engine giants, Google, you can do exactly that. Pay a visit to and you ll arrive at Google s Image Search page. Simply type a few words describing the type of picture you want, such as autumn leaves or steam locomotive, and press Enter to search. (There s no need to include words like pictures or images in your search since all the results found will be pictures.)

5 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet D 600 / 5 After a few moments you ll see the first page of results, containing about 20 pictures that matched your search. You can move to the next and subsequent pages of results by clicking the blue Next link at the bottom of the page. Results are split over multiple pages When you move the mouse over one of these pictures, some extra text will appear below it giving the dimensions of the picture in pixels along with the address of the website on which it was found. Click a picture to see a full-sized version If you see a picture you like, click it, and Google will whisk you to the web page containing the original version. There you should be able to right-click it and save it, and if you need to, have a look around the site for copyright details or a way to contact the picture s owner. All the while you should see a white Google panel above the web page, and you can click the blue Image Results link at the right of this panel to return to Google s search results and continue looking through them. A white panel at the top allows you to return to Google Although Google will take you to the web page 27

6 D 600 / 6 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet on which a picture was found, there s no guarantee the same picture will still be there. Website owners can change their pages whenever they like, so it s possible that Google found this picture several weeks ago and the website has since been changed. If you don t see the image on the page you arrive at, you can click the blue See full-size image link in the white Google panel above the page. Returning briefly to our mention of the legal issues, remember that Google found all these pictures on websites exactly the same way you would (albeit a great deal faster!), and the same copyright restrictions apply to pictures you arrive at this way. At Free Photos Bank you can use images as you like Browse Virtual Libraries for that Perfect Picture Let s escape from the clutches of copyright restrictions and find pictures you can take and use for personal or commercial use. The Internet has any number of photo libraries, and one of the best is Free Photos Bank at (pictured in the screenshot on the following page). Here you re allowed to do almost whatever you like with the photos available, short of selling them or publishing them in a competing photo library. When you arrive, the best place to start is with the Quick Navigation box at the top: simply pick a category of photos to look at, such as Lakes and Rivers. 28

7 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet D 600 / 7 Open the Quick Navigation list to pick a category In a similar way to Google, the pictures are split over numerous pages, and you can click the Next Page link to move from page to page. You re only seeing small versions of each picture at the moment, and the notes below tell you the actual dimensions of the full-sized picture, among other things. Click any photo to see a larger although still not necessarily full-sized version of it. You can right-click this picture to save it to your PC using the method given at the beginning of this article, but remember that you ll be saving it at the size you see it on the page. Below the picture you ll see the words Download free photo with two little red buttons beneath them (pictured below). To save the picture at its full size, click the button on the right. Click to see a larger copy of a picture Use the download button to save the full-sized image Click this button to save the picture 29

8 D 600 / 8 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet You should now see a dialog asking if you want to save or open this file. Click Save and then choose where to save it in the familiar Save dialog that appears. The stock.xchng site has a huge collection but free membership is required If you d like to confirm for yourself how you can use the photos on this site, click the Terms of use link right at the bottom of any page. At any photo library you find, it s worth looking for similar information before you start downloading. That way, if you find you can t use the images as you want to, you won t waste time looking through them, and you won t have to find and delete the ones you did download! Another photo library I m very keen on is the curiously-named stock.xchng at which has a huge collection of photos. Once again these are grouped into categories listed on the front page, and you can also click links to get straight to the most highlyrated or frequently-downloaded photos. There are a couple of reasons why I m mentioning this site second, and neither is related to its quantity or quality. First, before you can download any images, you have to become a member. Although this is free and quite straightforward (and you ll be prompted to do it the first time you download something), it is a bit of a pain. Second, not every image comes with a do-as-you-like license some are restricted to personal use only, although they tend to be a small minority. When you click an image to get a better view of it, you ll see a View image license link which explains concisely what you may and may not do with it. 30

9 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet D 600 / 9 The two sites mentioned above both offer photographs, and perhaps you re looking for clip art (hand-drawn graphics) instead? If so, head for for a wide choice. Once again the images are neatly divided into subject areas, where you look through small copies, and click anything that looks promising to see a full-sized version. If you find something you like, use the right-click > Save Picture As method to save it to your PC. Visit this site for clip art images These sites fall into a category of websites known as stock photos or stock images, and you can find plenty of similar sites by searching for either of those phrases at a search engine. Note that some stock photo banks are aimed at professionals and companies with deep pockets, though, and charge a small fortune for an image rather than allowing free use. How To Use Your Favourite Free Pictures as Desktop Wallpaper Wallpaper, as you probably know, is the large picture that covers your desktop, filling almost the whole of your screen, over which your icons and windows appear. One reason you might go in search of pictures on the Internet is to replace your tired old wallpaper with something new, and here s a site that offers an immense collection. The site is named InterfaceLIFT and you ll find it at Before you start looking through the pictures, it helps to know the size of your screen so that you know how large an image is needed to cover it. If you re not sure, find the line near the top of the web page that reads Click here to find out what InterfaceLIFT provides free wallpaper images Check your screen size to find wallpapers with the correct dimensions 31

10 D 600 / 10 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet resolution your monitor is currently running at and click the word resolution a pop-up message will tell you. After clicking OK in this message, look a little higher up the page and you ll see buttons containing various screen sizes: click the button that corresponds to your screen size, such as 1024x768, and all the pictures you see will be ones that are available in that size. The full-sized picture opens in a new window 32 Set as your wallpaper with two clicks Now you can start looking through the images. As usual you re seeing smaller versions of them, and you can click the Next Page button at the bottom of each page to see the next batch. If you find a picture you d like to use as your desktop wallpaper, click the download link beneath it and the full-sized version of the image will be shown. (As the image is the same size as your screen, the window probably won t be quite wide enough to see the whole picture, but don t worry about that.) When the picture has finished loading, you have a choice of two ways to use it as your desktop wallpaper. The first is easier, the second is better, and I ll run through both. Method 1 This is very easy indeed! Right-click the picture and choose Set as Background or, in earlier versions of Internet Explorer, Set as Wallpaper. Almost immediately your desktop wallpaper will change to the image you ve chosen. Although very easy, there s a catch to this method. Next time you do this, using a different picture, this one will be deleted from your computer to be replaced by the new one, so you won t be able to switch back to this one again in

11 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet D 600 / 11 future. If that doesn t bother you, it s a good method to use. Method 2 This method is best because it allows you to add new images to your existing collection of wallpapers and pick and choose between them whenever you feel like a change. However, it does involve finding your way around the folders on your hard disk specifically, finding your way to the Windows folder. We ll go through this method in steps: 1. We start in a way you ll be familiar with by now: right-click the large image that opened in your browser and choose Save Picture As. 2. In the Save dialog that appears, you need to make your way to your Windows folder, which is usually at C:\Windows: In Windows Vista, click Computer at the left of the dialog, then double-click the drive named C: then double-click the folder named Windows. In other versions of Windows, open the box at the top labelled Save in and choose My Computer. In the larger area below, doubleclick the drive named C: then double-click the folder named Windows. 3. Now that you re in the Windows folder, find and double-click the folder named Web. 4. Now double-click the folder named Wallpaper. 5. In the File name box, type a short, descriptive name for this picture (unless you re happy with the name already shown there) and finally click Save. Add new wallpapers to your collection Type a short name for the new picture 33

12 D 600 / 12 Download Free Pictures & Wallpaper from the Internet 6. Now you ve saved the picture to the folder where your other wallpapers are kept, and you can follow the same steps to store more there (now or in the future). Switch from one wallpaper to another 7. Whenever you want to change your wallpaper to one that you ve stored, here s what to do: Windows Vista: Right-click a blank space on the desktop and choose Personalize. In the window that appears, click the blue Desktop Background item and you ll see the window pictured below. Choose Windows Wallpapers from the Picture Location box, find the picture you want to use (which will be near the bottom of the list) and click it, then click OK. Choose Windows Wallpapers Select your picture Click OK Windows XP/2000/Me/98/95: Right-click a blank space on the desktop and choose Properties. In the dialog that appears, choose the Desktop tab in XP or the Background tab in other versions of Windows. Select the picture you want to use in the list and click OK. 34