Finding images on the web is as simple as accessing a search engine and typing in a query. But what if you want to use a specific image in a presentation, or on your own blog? In that case you must make sure there are no rights attached to that image, you must make sure that you can use it freely. The team at Yahoo! have acknowledged the fact that you might need a little help in locating images with no rights attached to them, as well as understanding how you an use some of the images you find online.

“Yahoo! Image Search is launching a Creative Commons license filter that allows you to simply and quickly find images that are available for reuse. When you use Yahoo! Image Search, you’ll now see a checkbox for Creative Commons allowing you to filter for images from Flickr that can be used commercially or that can be modified (remixed, tweaked, or built upon) with restrictions set by the image’s creator. Try it and let us know what you think. We bet your next PowerPoint will be prettier than ever,” explained Polly Ng and Anuj Sahai, Yahoo! Image Search.

According to Polly Ng and Anuj Sahai, this feature was a long time coming, ever since Yahoo! Image Search introduced filters back in March. At the time a large number of users expressed their desire to have a simple tool that would allow them to locate reusable images. By releasing this Creative Commons filter the Yahoo! Image Search team is not only responding to the user requests, it is also promoting guideline transparency.

“By launching the Creative Commons license search with Flickr and making it available to all our Yahoo! Image Search users, we aim to promote reusable work and to be transparent about the guidelines issued by the creator of a particular image, say Polly Ng and Anuj Sahai. “We’re proud to be the first image search engine to offer this capability.”

To get started with Yahoo! Image Search, click here.
To find out more about Creative Commons, click here.