Where to Download Royalty-Free Photos and Graphics for Your PowerPoint Presentation
PowerPoint is a medium for telling a story in text and visuals. All too often, presentations bulk up on text at the expense of good visuals. It is easier to dash off 6 bullet points than it is to find a great image that powers your point. A great photograph or illustration can do wonders for your PowerPoint presentation. It can illustrate your point; offer eye-catching graphics; and, even, amuse or move your audience. In fact, making your presentation more visual, will almost certainly increase your audience's focus and retention. This is a scientific fact! Research has proven that about half the population is more verbal/text-oriented, and half is visually-oriented. This is why a PowerPoint presentation consisting only of text slides loses a part of the audience every time; the visually-oriented people are tuning out. If you include both visuals and text, you will increase the success of your presentation. If you've tried to find images for your PowerPoint presentation, you might know how challenging this can be. Even if you do find the right image, how do you know if you have permission to use it? If you put copyrighted images into your presentation, you could be opening your organization up to potential legal trouble. Here's some good news for you: millions of great, inexpensive royalty-free images are just a mouse-click away--on the Internet. If you're on a budget, there are even free image resources at your beck and call. Here’s six great sources for "safe" royalty-free images for free or for small fees. These sites all have user-friendly searching tools, which can save a lot of time. Microsoft Design Gallery
Over 150,000 free photos, art, animations, and sounds. Usually okay to use in PowerPoint presentations. Click on the lower right icon under the image to copy to your clipboard, then paste into your slide. If you see a piece of art in a style you like, click on the image and then click the style link to see other art in the same family... using several pieces in the same style can add polish and consistency to your presentation. Flickr
Yahoo’s popular photo-sharing site has an astonishing variety of images, ranging in quality from out of focus snapshots to professional portraits. Literally thousands of new images are loaded here very day, so you never what you’ll find. The images are free, but some do require you to give a photographer’s credit, which can be done unobtrusively on a slide. US Government Photos and Graphics
Images from federal government websites are almost always in the public domain, which means they are free to be used without permission or paying a fee. However, these can require more time spent searching through various "dot.gov" sites. Wikipedia
You'll find some surprisingly good images on this well-known site. If you see something you like, click on the image. You'll go to another page, with information on that picture. If there's a high-resolution version, you can open it easily. Just click on the "download high-resolution version" link provided. Right-click on the image and save it to your desktop.Some Wikipedia images require a photographer credit. Most of them don't. To be sure, check the copyright information in the image's licensing section. Google Images
The popular search engine site has a vast array of images. The one drawback: many of the images are copyrighted, and require an e-mail request for permission. This is only worth pursuing if you find The Perfect Picture, and you've just gotta have it!These aren't the only image sites on the internet, but they're some of the best and most reliable. With a little diligent hunting, you can find some impressive images that will jazz up your presentation! iStockphoto
Currently, this is the cream of the stock-photo sites for PowerPoint usage. iStockphoto has high-quality photos and graphic illustrations. Most images can be purchased for as little as one to five dollars. It works on a system of points. Each point costs one dollar. You have the option to buy a package of pre-paid points. Once they're in your account, each image you buy deducts points from your accounts. You see a running tally of your remaining points, so you'll know when to refill the gas tank.This site costs money, but in our experience, it’s well worth the time saved. Quite often, they have just the right image in excellent quality. Bonus Tip: When you are downloading images to use in your PowerPoint presentation, always choose the lowest resolution. On the pay sites, you will have options to purchase in different resolutions. The higher the resolution, the higher the cost. Since PowerPoint is shown on a screen, images in 150 to 300 dpi look just fine, and it’s even possible to get away with 72 dpi.
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