Copyright-free photos for videos: where to find them and how to use them

Copyright-free photos are, in practice, of two kinds: those in the public domain because their rights have expired, and those with a licence that lets you use them, such as Creative Commons or a stock image library's. Before putting them in a video you have to read that licence (whether it allows commercial use, whether it requires attribution, whether it lets you modify them) and note where each image comes from.

Every photo has an author

The starting rule is that a photo you find on the internet has an owner. Spain's Ley de Propiedad Intelectual (in Spanish) (Intellectual Property Act) includes among protected works, in its article 10, “photographic works and those expressed by a process analogous to photography” (translated from the Spanish). And it protects even photos that do not amount to a work, “mere photographs”: under article 128, whoever takes them has the exclusive right to authorise their reproduction, distribution and public communication for twenty-five years, counted from 1 January of the year following the date the photograph was taken.

That is why it is not enough for an image to be published with no notice, or to credit its author: YouTube's help reminds you that acknowledging authorship does not automatically give you the right to use a work. What gives you that right is a licence, the owner's permission, the work being in the public domain, or the use fitting within a copyright exception.

Public domain: when rights expire

A work passes into the public domain when its exploitation rights expire, and from then on anyone can use it, as long as they respect the work's authorship and integrity (article 41). The general rule in Spain is that those rights last for the author's whole life and seventy years after their death (article 26), and the term is counted from 1 January of the year following the death (article 30).

There are nuances that change the sums. Works by authors who died before 7 December 1987 have the term set by the 1879 intellectual property law, and anonymous, pseudonymous and collaborative works have their own term rules. YouTube adds two warnings: checking that a work is in the public domain is the responsibility of whoever uploads it, and there is no official list of public domain works.

Creative Commons licences: what each one allows

Creative Commons is an international non-profit organisation that offers creators a standardised way of giving others permission to use their works. There are six licences and all of them require attribution; they differ in three further conditions. This is what their official summaries (deeds) say:

Abbreviation	Name	What it requires
BY	Attribution	Give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence and indicate if changes were made.
NC	NonCommercial	Do not use the material for commercial purposes.
ND	NoDerivatives	If you remix, transform or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
SA	ShareAlike	If you remix, transform or build upon the material, you must distribute your contribution under the same licence as the original.

The six combine those abbreviations: CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA and CC BY-NC-ND. CC0 is separate: whoever applies it has dedicated the work to the public domain, waiving all their rights to the extent permitted by law, and you can copy, modify and distribute the work, even for commercial purposes, without asking permission.

Which ones work for commercial use? Those without NC (CC BY, CC BY-SA and CC BY-ND allow commercial use) and CC0 works. For a channel that monetises this matters: YouTube says you can monetise Creative Commons licensed content if the licence agreement grants you the necessary commercial use rights. And two warnings from the summaries themselves: the licence may not give you all the permissions you need, because other rights, such as publicity, privacy or moral rights, may limit how you use the material; and CC0 does not affect patent or trademark rights, or the publicity or privacy rights that other people may have.

Stock image libraries and other licences

Besides Creative Commons there are images with commercial or other kinds of licence. Google, when explaining its usage rights filter, says they may come from websites where they are available at no cost or from paid commercial websites, and that is where stock image libraries come in. We do not recommend any in particular: what matters is its licence, which can be very different from one site to another. Before using a photo from a library, look in it for:

• Whether it allows commercial use and whether it covers use in videos published on the internet.
• Whether it requires attribution and in what format.
• What it excludes, for example uses with recognisable people or with brands and logos that appear in the image.
• Who grants it: the library itself or the author who uploaded the photo.

And keep a copy of the licence and of the download page from the day you used it: if the site changes its terms, you will know which ones you accepted.

How to tell whether an image is protected by copyright

Assume that it is, and look for proof to the contrary. Google Images helps with its “Usage rights” filter:

1. On a computer, go to images.google.com and search for an image.
2. Below the search box, click “Tools”.
3. Click “Usage rights” and choose a type of licence: “Creative Commons licenses” or “Commercial or other licenses”.
4. Click the image and, in the right-hand panel, click “License details” to see how to obtain the licence and use it.

The filter helps, but it does not decide for you. According to Google's help (in Spanish), images may be subject to copyright, the filter is based on information provided by the websites that host them or their provider, and it is advisable to verify the licence with both the provider and the hosting website. Before reusing anything, make sure the licence is legitimate: a photo copied onto someone else's website with a licence that is not its own still belongs to its author.

How to record each image's licence

Recording the licence serves you twice: you comply with the attribution it asks for and, if one day someone makes a claim, you have the answer. For each image, note:

Field	Example
Title of the work	“Harbour at dawn”
Author	The photographer's name or username
Source (URL)	The page you downloaded it from
Licence	CC BY 4.0, CC0, the library's licence…
Changes	Cropped, with text over it…
Where it appears	Scene or minute of the video

The first four are the details YouTube suggests for crediting another creator's work under Creative Commons: title, author, source (URL) and licence information, such as a note that it is licensed under CC BY. You can include them in the video, by overlaying text or with a voice-over, and in its description. The changes matter because, in version 4.0, you have to indicate whether you have modified the material. If you also use music, the same method applies: we explain it in copyright-free music for YouTube.

How the Estudio de Canales does it

In the Estudio de Canales, each scene's image is generated with AI or is an asset of your own, each with its licence and origin recorded:

• If you upload an image of your own (PNG, JPG or WEBP, or an MP4 clip, up to 25 MB), you have to write its source and its licence: without those two details it does not go in.
• The description the studio proposes includes a “Recursos de terceros” (third-party resources) section with the source and licence of each uploaded image, and you can edit it before publishing.
• The package to upload includes a licences file with the origin and licence of each scene's image and voice.
• Without the licence and origin recorded, the scene does not pass its review and the video does not reach “ready to publish”.
• If you reuse an image from your channel in another scene, it is copied with its licence and the asset it comes from is recorded.

What it does not do: it does not search for photos in stock image libraries (archive footage scenes are covered by uploading an asset of your own or reusing one), it does not check that the licence you write is correct and it does not decide for you whether an image can be used. The other route is to generate the images with Gemini image models; what rights you have over them is another question, which we cover in AI images and copyright. The general framework, with Content ID and strikes, is in copyright on YouTube.

Sources consulted

Checked on 11 October 2026. We link to the original source so that you can consult the current text.

• Encontrar imágenes para usar y compartir. Google · Ayuda de la Búsqueda de Google.
• Real Decreto Legislativo 1/1996, de 12 de abril, texto refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual (texto consolidado). BOE.
• Tipos de licencias en YouTube. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.
• Derechos de autor en YouTube. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.
• Mitos comunes relacionados con los derechos de autor. Google · Ayuda de YouTube.
• About CC Licenses. Creative Commons.
• Atribución/Reconocimiento 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0), resumen de la licencia. Creative Commons.
• Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), resumen de la licencia. Creative Commons.
• Atribución-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional (CC BY-SA 4.0), resumen de la licencia. Creative Commons.
• CC0 1.0 Universal, resumen. Creative Commons.