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Clip Art for
Your Web Site
FREE CLIP ART & PHOTOS
- TIPS & HINTS Clip art,
like animation or music, can spice up your website but you need to be careful
not to overdo it. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of web sites
that offer free clip art. Be forewarned, though - most of what is available is
very amateurish and/or cartoon-like in appearance. That may be fine if it
matches the "personality" of your website, but if you want a more
professional look, such as for a business, you may want to forego clip art in
favor of actual photographs. There are also some websites offering free photos,
as well as CDs you can buy for as little as $10 that have extensive photo
collections.
FREE
& OTHER CLIP ART & PHOTO SOURCES
With that said, here are some useful tips and free resources:
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go to google.com and type this in the search window:
"free
clip art" (about 1.75 million returns) - to narrow your search,
add a single word or phrase (in quotes) describing the specific type of
art you're seeking, e.g. mechanic, plane, space, etc. - use the
singular, not the plural)
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for photos, type in "free
photos" (about 2.42 million returns) - to narrow your search,
add a single word or phrase (in quotes) describing the specific type of
photo you're seeking, e.g. mechanic, plane, space, etc. - use the
singular, not the plural)
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www.1clipart.com/
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www.free-graphics.com/
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www.freeze.com
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Free-ClipArts.net
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www.coolarchive.com/
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Microsoft
Office Clip Art
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www.aaaclipart.com/
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www.clip-art.com/
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www.clipartconnection.com/
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classroomclipart.com/
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school.discovery.com/clipart/
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www.barrysclipart.com/
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www.clipart.co.uk/
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www.fotosearch.com/
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www.webplaces.com/html/clipart.htm
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www.allfreeclipart.com/
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www.hasslefreeclipart.com/
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www.clipsahoy.com/
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www.free-clip-images.com/
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www.animationfactory.com/
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www.iband.com/
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www.BigStockPhoto.com
You may also wish to check some of the small ads to the left.
there may be duplications between those and some of the listings just above.
Sites offering "royalty-free" clip art or photos do
not offer these for free - and sometimes they charge outrageously high fees, up
to $150 per photo!!!! That's for one-time use. So unless you absolutely have to
have one of these, I recommend avoiding them. "Royalty-free" simply
means you pay their fee for "one-time use" then don't have to pay
additional royalties - but the initial fee is so high you can usually do better
elsewhere.
Start browsing!
 Also, you'll
find that office supply stores such as Staples,
Office Depot or Office Max also sell huge collections of clip art.
Nova Art Explosion® 800,000 ($89.99 at Staples) continues this tradition with exclusive vector illustrations, brand new photographs, professionally designed web graphics and more. Its the most complete Windows clip art package Nova has ever released.
Included are 34 CD-ROMs, four CD-ROM portfolios, an 1800-page printed catalog and our exclusive Quick Locator index.
Best of all, Art Explosion 800,000 requires no downloads and no memberships.
What you see is what you get ... and what you get is all inside the box.
-
Nearly 200,000 of the Finest Scalable Vector Clip
Art Images Available
-
120,000 Color Photos and Backgrounds
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32-bit Image Browser Software
with Full Color Previews
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Popular WMF, TIF, GIF, JPG File Formats
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Includes More Than 350,000 Exclusive Graphics
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Free Technical Support
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Widest Variety of Graphics
Available: Classic and Retro Images, Web Graphics, Animations, Technical Symbols
and MUCH more..
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System requirements: Windows 95, 98, 2000, Me or XP, Pentium 133 Mhz or faster, 32 MB RAM
Other collections are smaller and often much cheaper.
IMPORTANT
TIPS
In using either clip art or photos, it is important to
remember these tips:
-
keep your photo size very small
-
optimize your photo to make it small (this means reducing
some of the colors in a good photo program). Check Google.com for freeware
or shareware programs capable of doing this.
-
if you must include a large (slow-loading) photo, create
a thumbnail and use it as a link to the larger photo, so your website
visitor has the choice to look at the big one or not.
-
don't put a lot of photos (even small ones) on one page -
it takes far too long to download unless your visitor has a cable or DSL
connection (only 30% of US internet users do, the rest of us still have to
use the much slower telephone line connection)
-
make sure your photos relate to the topic of your website
and don't just take up space to look cute
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if your website is selling a service or product, the only
reason for including art (or anything else) is to increase your chance of
making a sale!
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