We had the images, but not permission to use them

I am working on Blickwinkel and its Instagram account. During our first content review, our junior business communications manager showed me a set of possible posts. She had selected an image for each post and arranged them as a set. I liked her choices.

Then I asked, “Can we safely use the image material?”

The conversation went quiet. We had the images, but not their original sources, license terms, creator names, or model releases. We could see and save each image. Blickwinkel still lacked permission to publish it.

At first I wondered whether age explained the gap. She grew up with the “web of platforms,” including Instagram, Pinterest, and Cosmos. I reached for the Generation Z label, although I find those categories rather strange.

One conversation cannot tell me what a generation believes. It showed that our review process had never required an answer about image rights. These platforms let a person save an image in seconds. Screenshots and downloaded copies often omit the source URL, the creator’s name, and the license.

I liked one part of her approach. She expected people to share creative work and make something new from it. That expectation reminded me of learning Photoshop and programming online.

The internet I remember

I spent a lot of time in forums. Some had Photoshop battle threads. One person posted an image, and everyone else transformed it. We cut out subjects, changed backgrounds, exaggerated each other’s edits, and passed the result around again.

When I needed information, somebody had usually written a tutorial on a personal site. When I needed inspiration, a designer had posted experiments on a blog. People shared snippets, brushes, textures, source files, and unfinished ideas because another person might find them useful.

People gave useful material to strangers. We were also legally naive. Within a Photoshop battle, posting an image meant that other participants would edit it. That invitation rarely came with a license. A link to the author might survive the next repost, or it might disappear. Some files we treated as common material were almost certainly not ours to use.

I would still work that way if the permission were explicit.

Once I began publishing for clients and my own companies, every external image needed a clear source and permission. Liking an image does not pay its photographer. Finding a file does not grant a license. Crediting a creator does not cure a use the creator never permitted. When Blickwinkel publishes an image to support its business, we need permission before the post goes live.

I want people to take the same care with my work. Much of my open-source software, including sayneat and KMS, uses the MIT License. It permits use, modification, distribution, sublicensing, and sale. Copies or substantial portions must retain the copyright and permission notice.

The MIT License states the permission and the condition in a few paragraphs. Users do not need to infer what I might tolerate. The required notice preserves the author’s name and the license terms in copies of the software.

For images, I now look for the same two facts. The license must permit the intended use, and it must state which notice to retain.

Discovery is not permission

Pinterest and the main Cosmos product help us show one another the kinds of images we mean. They do not prove that Blickwinkel may publish an image. A pin, saved element, screenshot, or repost may not identify the copyright holder. It also says nothing about permission from the people shown in an advertisement.

Public Work by Cosmos searches material that Cosmos believes is in the public domain. Its terms say that Cosmos does not warrant that every work is in the public domain. Users must check the work themselves. I follow each result to the museum or library record and save that institution’s rights statement.

Stock libraries publish reuse terms. That addresses the photographer’s copyright, but those terms may not cover every right visible inside the photograph.

Copyright in the photograph is one layer. A commercial post may also involve a recognizable person’s privacy or publicity rights, a trademark on clothing, copyright in a painting, or rules for photographing a private interior. The exact rules depend on the jurisdiction and the proposed use. A source can grant only the rights it owns or has secured.

Unsplash documents this distinction on two separate pages. Its standard images may be used for most commercial and editorial projects without permission or credit under the Unsplash license. However, Unsplash does not guarantee the scope of model releases, property releases, trademark rights, or rights in depicted objects.

Unsplash states that Unsplash+ images are model and property released when they depict people or property. They are also royalty-free and carry additional legal protection. For Blickwinkel, Plus is the better default when a recognizable person or private place is the main subject.

A sourcing policy for Blickwinkel

We will not ask the team to compare thirty license pages for every post. I reduced the research to this order of preference.

Priority	Sources	How we use them
1	Unsplash and Unsplash+	We use standard images for generic scenes without a prominent person, brand, artwork, or private property. We prefer Plus when a recognizable person or property is central.
2	Dupe	We use it when its contemporary phone photography matches the draft better than conventional stock. Its current license allows commercial use and adaptation without attribution, but not a competing image service.
3	Pexels	We use it for lifestyle photography and video. Its license permits free commercial use and editing without required attribution, subject to its restrictions.
4	Kaboompics	We use it for interiors, fashion, and composed lifestyle scenes under its commercial-use license. We still inspect brands, people, art, and property.
5	StockSnap, ISO Republic, and NegativeSpace	These sites label their collections CC0, which permits commercial reuse without credit. Privacy, publicity, trademark, and other rights can remain.
6	Wikimedia Commons and public cultural archives	We use these for historical material, art, type, and collage. We check every object’s rights statement because terms vary by file and institution.
7	Pixabay	We use it as a broad fallback for photographs, illustrations, and other media under the Pixabay Content License. We inspect its prohibited uses and anything recognizable in the asset.

We prefer a source whose license and release information we can save with the asset, even if another source imposes fewer conditions.

For a forest, an empty room, a texture, or an abstract object, a standard stock license will often answer the rights question. For a portrait, designer chair, Nike logo, painting, private apartment, or celebrity, we check the additional rights. If we cannot find that evidence, we replace the image before the team builds the rest of the campaign around it.

The longer source directory

The broader search produced more candidates. I grouped them by the evidence we need to retain. “No attribution required” describes the photographer’s stated license. It does not erase other rights or the source’s restrictions.

Group	Sources	What to check
Broad stock libraries	Burst by Shopify, Gratisography, picjumbo, and Barnimages	Each source permits commercial reuse without required credit under its own terms. The licenses restrict resale or redistribution of unchanged files, and some sources warn that releases may be absent.
CC0 libraries	Skitterphoto, Picography, ShotStash, and LibreShot	The sites describe their images as CC0 or public-domain material. CC0 does not waive another person’s privacy, publicity, patent, or trademark rights.
Representation and specialist material	Nappy, Foodiesfeed, and Startup Stock Photos	Nappy focuses on Black and Brown people and prohibits degrading uses. Foodiesfeed includes both photographs and AI-generated images. Startup Stock Photos says attribution is optional, but its FAQ does not supply formal model releases.
Public-domain institutions	Smithsonian Open Access, New York Public Library Public Domain Collections, and Library of Congress Free to Use and Reuse	We stay within material marked CC0, public domain, or free to use. We preserve the institution’s object page and rights statement.
Rights-statement aggregators	Europeana, rawpixel, and Cosmos Public Work	Rights vary by object, collection, or account tier. We follow the result to its underlying record rather than treating the search page as the license.
Large mixed archive	Morguefile	We verify the license attached to the individual download and do not assume one search result has the same terms as another.

I left Freerange Stock and Freepik out of the working list. During this review, Freerange’s license path from the original research no longer resolved. Freepik’s terms and attribution duties depended on the product and account tier. I could not turn either source into a rule that the team could apply consistently.

I checked this directory on 13 September 2026. Sites can change their licenses. We will read the current terms again when we download an asset rather than treating this article as permanent permission.

Record the source and license

After downloading an image, we save its source and license record. Six months later, the post should still have an answer to “Where did this image come from?”

For every external asset, we record:

The original asset page and the downloaded filename.
The creator’s displayed name and profile URL, when available.
The license name, version, and license URL.
The date on which we downloaded the asset and checked the terms.
Any statement about a model or property release.
The edits we made and the channels on which we published the result.

When a license requires attribution, we include it in the post and follow the specified format. For Creative Commons material, the recommended attribution practice calls for the title, author, source, and license, plus an indication of changes. When credit is optional and the format permits it, I name the photographer. Optional credit does not replace legal compliance. It tells readers who made the photograph and where to find more of their work.

If we cannot reconstruct that record, we do not publish the asset. We can license another photograph, ask the creator, make our own, or change the idea. Once several people have edited and scheduled a post, memory is not sufficient evidence of permission.

The source record keeps the photographer’s name with a reusable photograph. For a public-domain scan, it keeps the museum’s object page with the image. In an open-source release, the license keeps the author’s copyright notice in copies of the code.

The next time we review a Blickwinkel post, the image should arrive with its source URL, creator, license, and release notes. Then “Can we safely use this?” should not end the conversation. It should take less than a minute to answer.