Finding graphics for your

presentations

Downloading fantastic Flickr photos

If you want great looking presentations, you’ll need great looking photos to go
on your slides. But how can you get hold of professional photos without
splashing out on professional graphics, learning photography, or risking
copyright violation?
Using Flickr, that’s how. Flickr is an online photo gallery used by thousands of
talented photographers. Many of them choose to waive their copyright on
their images, enabling you to legally use their photos in your presentations
and other designs.
Let’s find out how to do that now.

Time for Action – finding great pics on Flickr

1. Go to http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/
2. Into the top search box, type the keyword you want to look for.
Here I’ve typed ‘wheelchair’:
 3. Now scroll down to near the bottom of the page, and tick ‘Only
search within Creative Commons-licensed photos’, then tick ‘Find
content to be used commercially’.

4. Then scroll down a bit further if necessary, and click ‘SEARCH’.

5. This will take you to a page that lists images matching the search
term. The ‘most relevant’ will be at the top. This usually means
images that use your search time several times in the description,
title, and ‘tags’:

2
6. Scroll around until you find the one you like best. When you do,
click it…
7. This will show you a larger version of the image, but it’s still not
large enough to use in a big-screen presentation or a large print
out, so click on ‘All Sizes’ (one of the buttons immediately above
the image.)
8. This will take you to a page that displays either a near-full screen
version of the image, or the largest version available if the image
isn’t full screen to start with. Right click on the ‘big’ image, and
choose ‘Copy Image’ (or just ‘Copy’). Do not choose ‘Copy
Shortcut’.
9. Now go to your PowerPoint presentation or document, find the
place that you want to put the image, and click the Paste button.
10. Resize and crop the image so that it fills the slide, or is whatever
size, shape, and location you require:

3
What just happened?
We visited the Flickr Advanced Search page, and typed our keyword. We
narrowed the search using Creative Commons licenses to find only images
that we are allowed to use in presentations. We also chose to find only images
that we can use commercially – that is, for business purposes.
When we clicked search, Flickr found photos to match our requirements – and
arranged them with the ones it considers most relevant at the top.
We then chose our favourite image, viewed it, then grabbed a larger version
for use in our presentation.
We used the Copy function to put the image on the computer’s clipboard (a
special part of the computer’s memory), then the Paste function to get the
image from the clipboard and into PowerPoint.
We then used the resizing and cropping tools in PowerPoint to get the image
filling the slide. Of course, we might not always want the image to fill the
whole slide – but usually it looks impressive when they do.

4
Working with Creative Commons
You probably have heard that it’s dangerous to use images you find on the
Internet, because they are protected by copyright. Creative Commons
provides a way for photographers, artists, and other creative people to license
their work for use by others.
Ticking the first Creative Commons box means that Flickr will only find images
that are licensed in this way.
However, photographers can choose to place certain restrictions on how you
can use their work, including:
• Non Commercial Use – this means that you can use the image for
personal, hobby projects – but nothing connected with making money.
Ticking the second Creative Commons box means that Flickr won’t
display any images with this restriction in the search results.
• Share Alike – this means that any piece of work that uses the image
needs to also have a creative commons license. If you are using and
image like this in a PowerPoint presentation then you have to let
people make a copy of the presentation, and modify it for themselves if
they want. In other words, you have to give your presentation a
Creative Commons license.
• Attribution – this means that you have to credit the photographer for
their work. Usually a link to the photograph on Flickr is enough for this.
So you have to make sure that you don’t use these images in a way that will
violate those restrictions. Let’s see how to do that now...

Giving attribution
Some photographers require that you give some ‘attribution’ of their work.
You can check this by looking on the right-hand side of a photo’s Flickr home
page, and scrolling down until you see something like this:

5
The tiny “By:” icon towards the top left of that screenshot means “if you use
this, tell people where it came from”. The easiest way to do that is to include
the URL of the Flickr page.
The URL is shown in the web browser’s address box. You can select the text
there, press Ctrl-C to copy it, and then head to the slide that uses the photo –
or a slide at the end of the presentation called credits.
Then paste that text into the slide, wherever you want it. You might end up
with a slide like this:

6
Giving your presentation a Creative Commons license
You might want to make your presentation available under a creative
commons license. If you are using any photos that carry a “share alike”
requirement – a tiny equals sign here like the one here:

... then you are required to share your presentation under a creative commons
license, and require a ‘share alike’ too.

Time for Action – License your presentation

1. Visit http://creativecommons.org/license/ and choose your what
rights you want to allow:

7
 Remember that if you use ‘share alike’ images then you must
‘share alike’ your presentation.
2. The system should automatically choose the jurisdiction based on
your location, but if it’s wrong then choose the correct one. (Usually
your own country.)
3. Click “Select a Licence”.
4. A new page comes up, offering you a choice of three icons for your
license. Right-click the biggest one and choose ‘Copy’ – like you did
for the Flickr image earlier.
5. Now go to your presentation and Paste the image wherever you
want the license to appear (usually the very first or very last slide).
6. Now go back to the web page, right click the chosen icon again and
choose “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Location”
7. Then, return to PowerPoint, right-click on the image you just pasted
and choose Hyperlink
8. Go to the Address box and Paste the shortcut into it. You can’t use
the Paste button on the toolbar to do this. Instead you have to use
the keyboard: hold down Ctrl and press V.

8
 9. Click OK – you now have a Creative Commons licensed
presentation:

You might want to add some text to explain what this image means,
to people who don’t know about Creative Commons.

Most Relevant vs. Most Interesting

When Flickr finds many photos in response to your search, it has to decide
what order to display them in. It will consider two main factors:
• Relevance – how close does the photo match your search?
• Interestingness – is this a photo that lots of people like to look at? In
other words – is this a great piece of photography?
You can switch between the two different orders by choosing Most Relevant or
Most Interesting on the results page (just above where the list of photos
displays).
Most Relevant will usually give you the sort of photo you were expecting when
you put in the search. Most Interesting might give you surprising results – that
will also often look more exciting.