Finding decent pictures, images and illustrations doesn’t have to be a long and drawn-out headache when you need something more than words in a manuscript. An author can choose to create their own artwork or seek out an artist. If neither of these ideas is an option, there are a few other places to look.

There are websites available that offer pictures free of copyright. This does not mean the artist has relinquished copyright by any means. What this means is they made the images free for authors and writers to use without asking for any form of payment. The websites https://www.Pixabay.com and https://www.Unsplash.com are two of these pretty awesome sources.

To be clear on the subject of copyrights and infringements, neither of these websites require that an author give credit but they do request and appreciate the acknowledgment of their work being used. While it is not mandatory to credit the artists, they hope users will give them credit so that their work gets noticed along with the author’s. This request doesn’t seem unfair in any way since it makes the entire situation a win-win type deal.

There are some websites like https://www.shutterstock.com that allow an author to purchase imagery of all sorts for their manuscript. Shutterstock does require you to purchase a content license at fairly reasonable rates and they do have an excessively large variety of art to choose from. Be certain to read through the website’s terms and conditions if you choose to use them as a source so you know exactly what you can and cannot do with the material.

Any of these three websites is an exceptional place to browse through if you’re looking for beautiful artwork for a manuscript. Both the free and purchased concepts run on a very fair crediting system which put them pretty high on my personal list of great resources.

Regardless of how you decide to illustrate your work, make sure to be kind enough to credit the artist with the creation of their work. Even if crediting is not required, obviously, it should be done anyway. To give fair information, there are several creative commons websites that contain a lot of great work too that could also be a worthy resource to check out. However, creative commons and out-of-date copyrighted material is a fairly risky way to go since they have several different types of licenses to decide from. The reason for the various licenses in the creative commons work is that some of the work was previously copyrighted or there is some sort of clause in place that prohibits use in work that you intend on selling. If you choose to go with something out of creative commons, make sure to read the fine print, carefully read the licensing uses and policies and of course always decide what is right for you based on what you need for your manuscript.

There are, more than likely, several other avenues to be considered when choosing artwork but the three websites above stood out amongst the rest. So if you find yourself in a situation where you want to illustrate a manuscript and you don’t have the time, inclination or the ability to create your own, it could be a good idea to consider these websites. Once again, it is important that you do your diligent homework to make sure that what you are using is available for the reasons you want to use it. Above all, make sure to credit the artist even if it is not required.