Creative Commons licenses are free, standard licenses that let a photographer keep copyright while allowing anyone to use a photo on set conditions, such as giving credit, not using it commercially or not changing it. Public domain photos are not protected by copyright at all, because protection has expired, the owner has given it up or the work was never protected, so anyone can use them without permission. Both are useful, but each comes with limits that catch people out.
The short version of the six Creative Commons licenses is on copyright basics for photographers. This page goes further: what each license condition actually requires, how to credit properly, how public domain status arises and varies by country, the rights a free license does not cover, how to check that a license is genuine, and whether to release your own photos this way. It is general education, not legal advice. Copyright terms and rules differ between countries, and the license text itself is what counts in a dispute.
How Creative Commons licenses work
Copyright normally means “all rights reserved”: nobody may use the photo without asking. A Creative Commons license changes that to “some rights reserved”. The photographer stays the owner and chooses, in advance, a set of conditions under which anyone may use the photo without asking.
Three features matter most:
- The license is public and standard. Everyone uses the same texts, so users do not have to read a new contract for each photo.
- It cannot be taken back for past uses. Once a photo is offered under one of these licenses, someone who used it while following the conditions keeps that right, even if the photographer later stops offering the license.
- Breaking a condition ends the permission. Use without the required credit, or commercial use under a non-commercial license, is no longer licensed, and becomes ordinary infringement.
The four conditions and six licenses
Every license is built from four building blocks. Attribution is in all six; the others are combined in different ways.
| Condition | Short code | What it requires |
|---|---|---|
| Attribution | BY | Credit the creator, link to the license and indicate if you changed the photo |
| ShareAlike | SA | If you adapt the photo, share your adaptation under the same license |
| NonCommercial | NC | Do not use the photo mainly for commercial advantage or payment |
| NoDerivatives | ND | Share the photo only as it is, without adapting it |
Combined, they give six licenses, from most open to most restrictive:
- BY: any use, including commercial and adapted, with credit.
- BY-SA: any use with credit, and adaptations must use the same license.
- BY-ND: any use with credit, including commercial, but no adaptations.
- BY-NC: non-commercial use with credit, adaptations allowed.
- BY-NC-SA: non-commercial use with credit, adaptations under the same license.
- BY-NC-ND: non-commercial use with credit, no adaptations.
The tricky words: commercial and adapted
“NonCommercial” is the condition people argue about most. A business blog, a company social account or a product page is almost certainly commercial. A personal blog with ads, or a charity fundraising page, is less clear. When in doubt, treat it as commercial or ask the photographer.
“Adapted” is also not always obvious. Combining a photo into a collage, heavily editing it or turning it into a painting are adaptations. Simple format changes, such as resizing to fit a page, are generally not. Cropping falls in a gray area, so avoid significant crops of ND photos.
How to credit a Creative Commons photo
A good credit has four parts, often remembered as title, author, source and license:
- Title of the photo, if it has one.
- Author, using the name the photographer asks for.
- Source, a link to where the photo was published.
- License, the license name with a link to its text.
Add a note if you changed the photo, for example “cropped and converted to black and white”. A credit might read: “Harbor at Dawn” by A. Photographer, from their portfolio, licensed under CC BY, cropped. Place it near the photo, in a caption or at the end of the page, as long as a reader can find it.
How do you know whether a “free” photo really is free? Reverse image search traces a picture back to its original source and creator before you use it.
What the public domain means
A photo in the public domain has no copyright owner. Anyone may copy, adapt and sell it, without permission or credit, although giving credit is still good practice. Photos reach the public domain in a few ways.
- Copyright has expired. Copyright lasts a long time, commonly the author’s life plus several decades, but the length varies by country and by when and how a photo was made and published. Old photos can be public domain in one country and protected in another.
- The owner has dedicated it. A public domain dedication, such as the Creative Commons zero tool, waives copyright as far as the law allows.
- It was never protected. Some countries treat works made by their national government as unprotected. Some also hold that a faithful photographic copy of a two-dimensional artwork, such as a scan of an old painting, has no new copyright of its own.
- It is marked. Museums and archives sometimes use a public domain mark or a “no known copyright restrictions” label to show they believe a work is free. These are statements of belief, not guarantees.
“Public domain” in the legal sense is not the same as “publicly available”. A photo on a public website, a famous image or a photo with no credit is not public domain just because anyone can see it.
Rights a free license does not cover
A Creative Commons license or public domain status deals only with the photographer’s copyright. Other rights can still stop a use.
- People in the photo. A license does not include a model release. Using a recognizable person in an advertisement can still need their permission. See model release forms.
- Property, logos and artworks. Buildings, products, trademarks and artworks in the frame can carry their own rights, covered on property releases.
- Privacy and personality rights. Some countries restrict uses of a person’s image that could embarrass them or suggest endorsement, whatever the license says.
- Moral rights. In many countries the author keeps the right to be named and to object to treatment that harms their reputation, even when copyright is licensed or the work is free.
- Platform terms. A site that hosts free photos may add its own rules on top, such as banning use in certain products.
Checking that a license is genuine
The biggest risk with free photos is someone offering a license they had no right to give, such as a person who uploads another photographer’s image to a free site. The user can still be liable, even if they acted in good faith. A short check reduces the risk:
- Find the original source. Search the photo to see whether it appears elsewhere under a different name or with a different license.
- Check that the uploader is the creator. Look for a consistent portfolio, profile and other photos in the same style.
- Read the license link. Confirm which license it is, rather than trusting a summary or badge.
- Save evidence. Take a dated screenshot of the photo page showing the license. If the license is later removed, this shows what was offered when you used it.
- Be extra careful with commercial uses. For advertising or products, a paid license from a known source, or a model and property release, is often worth it.
Many free stock sites use their own custom licenses rather than Creative Commons. Read each site’s license. They often allow broad use but restrict things like selling unaltered copies or implying endorsement.
Should you license your own photos this way?
Offering some photos under Creative Commons is a choice with real trade-offs.
| Reasons to do it | Reasons to hold back |
|---|---|
| Wider exposure and credit links back to your work | Lost licensing income, since many users who might have paid will choose the free option |
| Supporting education, nonprofits, encyclopedias and open projects | The license cannot be withdrawn for people already using it |
| Less admin than answering every permission request | Credits are often missing or wrong, and enforcement takes time |
| A way to share personal or archive work that would never sell | Your photo may end up in uses you dislike, within the license terms |
A common middle path is to keep your commercially valuable work under normal copyright, licensing it through stock or directly, and to offer older, personal or documentary photos under a non-commercial license. A non-commercial license also leaves room to sell commercial licenses for the same photos. If you release photos of people, get model releases first, since users will rely on your choice.
Licensing your best work for a fee instead? Rights-managed vs royalty-free compares the two main paid licensing models.
Old photos, archives and family pictures
Old photographs are where public domain questions come up most, and where assumptions go wrong most often.
- Government archive collections. Some national archives and libraries hold large collections made by government photographers, which can be free to use in the country that made them. The documentary work Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange made for a government agency is a well-known example. Check each archive’s rights statement, because collections mix free and protected material.
- Family photos. Owning a print is not the same as owning the copyright. A studio portrait of a grandparent normally belonged to the photographer or studio, and may still be protected if they died within the copyright term. Snapshots taken by relatives belong to their heirs. For personal use and family sharing this rarely matters, but it can matter for books, exhibitions and sale. Building a family photo archive covers scanning, organizing and recording who took what.
- Restored and colorized images. A faithful scan or simple cleanup of an old photo usually adds no new copyright. Heavy creative restoration or colorization may, in some places, so a “public domain” photo found online in restored form may carry new rights. Restoring an old photo shows what that work involves.
- Unknown photographers. Photos with no known author, sometimes called orphan works, are not automatically free. Some countries have special rules for using them after a careful search; most do not.
Recording licenses in your files
Whether you use free photos or release your own, write the license into the file. The usage terms and copyright fields in image metadata can hold the license name and a link, so the information travels with the photo and you can check it years later without searching again.
Common mistakes
- Treating “free to view” as “free to use”. Most images online are protected. Fix: look for a clear license or public domain statement.
- Leaving out the credit. Without it, the license no longer applies. Fix: include title, author, source and license.
- Using a non-commercial photo for business. Fix: check the license code before using a photo on a company site or product.
- Editing an ND photo. Fix: use it as it is, or choose a photo that allows adaptations.
- Assuming old means public domain. Terms vary by country and by the photographer’s life. Fix: check the rules where you are publishing.
- Forgetting model and property rights. Fix: get releases for commercial use of people and private property.
- Trusting the uploader blindly. Fix: trace the photo to its original source and save the license page.
Try this
Spend ten minutes practicing license reading. Find three photos online that are offered under Creative Commons, each with a different license code. For each, write the correct credit using title, author, source and license, and one line saying whether you could use it on a business website and whether you could crop it. Then find one public domain photo from a museum or archive and note how it is labeled. Finally, decide whether there is one group of your own photos you would offer under a free license, and which code you would choose.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use Creative Commons photos for commercial purposes?
Only if the license does not include NC. Photos under BY, BY-SA and BY-ND can be used commercially as long as you follow the other conditions, but people and property in the photo may still need releases.
Do I have to credit a public domain photo?
Usually not legally, because there is no copyright owner, although some countries protect the author’s right to be named. Crediting the creator and source is still good practice and helps others check the status.
What is the difference between public domain and Creative Commons?
A Creative Commons photo is still protected by copyright, with permission given on set conditions. A public domain photo has no copyright, so there are no license conditions to follow.
Are old photos always in the public domain?
No. Copyright usually lasts for decades after the photographer’s death, and the rules vary between countries. An old photo can be free in one place and protected in another.
Can a Creative Commons license be revoked?
The photographer can stop offering it for new users, but anyone who used the photo while following the license keeps that right for their existing use.
Does a Creative Commons license include a model release?
No. The license covers only the photographer’s copyright. Using a recognizable person commercially can still need their permission.
Is CC0 the same as the public domain?
Nearly. CC0 is a tool a creator uses to give up copyright as far as the law allows. In countries where copyright cannot be fully waived, it works as a very broad license instead, so the practical result is close to public domain.
Can I sell prints of a Creative Commons photo?
Only under a license without NC, and only while following the other conditions, such as giving credit and, for ND, not altering the photo. Check people and property rights too, since a print for sale is a commercial use.
Related guides
- Copyright basics for photographers: ownership, duration and licensing.
- Fair use and copyright infringement: uses allowed without a license.
- Stock photography: paid licensing, and how free stock differs.
- Model release forms: people in your photos.
- Property releases: buildings, logos and artworks.
- Reverse image search: finding the original source of an image.