• How will the work be used? Is it for commentary, education, research, etc.? Will someone profit financially from it?
• What kind of work is it? In particular, has it been published?
• How much of the work will be used? All of it? Most of it? A little of it?
• How will the use effect the sales of the original? Will people still buy/use the original?

Use the flowchart on Can I Use that Picture? The Terms, Laws, and Ethics for Using Copyrighted Images, from Curtis Newbold, to decide if you your use of a source is fair use.

Use the Fair Use Evaluator, from the American Library Association, for a thorough analysis and to write a justification of your use.

If the image has a Creative Commons license, you must follow the terms of the license. Some owners will ask only that you include attribution. Others include stipulations on how and where you can use the image. Use these Best Practices for Attribution to guide the information you include in your citations.

The image below outlines all the possible Creative Commons licenses:

[Full size image]

Use Command + Shift + 3. The screenshot usually shows up on your Desktop, with a name like “Screen Shot 2015-02-14 at 9.29.31 AM.” You can edit the image (crop it, etc.) if you like.

You can also use Grab, which will let you select a specific portion of the screen (rather than the whole page). If you have Mac OS X v10.4 or newer, find Grab under the File menu in Preview now has a Grab submenu in the File menu. Otherwise, look for Grab in the Applications folder and then in the Utilities folder.

On Windows

On Windows 8, use Windows Key + Print Screen. On Windows 7, use Print Screen and then paste the image into an image editor.

You can also use the Snippings Tool (also on Windows 7), which will let you select a specific portion of the screen (rather than the whole page).

Additional Tools

For more sophisticated screenshots as well as screen capture videos, you can try Jing, which is free for both Mac and Windows, or Skitch, which is free for Mac, Windows, and iPhone.

See the Best Practices for Attribution from Creative Commons for details on how to cite your images in your work.

• If necessary, be sure that your crop and resize your images before you add them to your document.
• Use the insert tools in the word processor you prefer to place the images on the page. On your Google Drive, look under the Insert menu.
• Look for a Wrap option in your word processor to change how the words on the page wrap around the image. Wrapped images are usually better than stacking an image on the words.
• Tie the images to the text specifically. Refer to the image in order to make it clear how the image relates to the ideas in the text.
• Be sure that cite the source for your graphics as well. Check your textbook for details on citing your sources.

• Digital Slider, from the American Library Association.
• Copyright Genie, from the American Library Association.
• Fair Use Evaluator, from the American Library Association.
• Can I Use that Picture? The Terms, Laws, and Ethics for Using Copyrighted Images, from Curtis Newbold

If you are unsure, you can look for copyright and media use guidelines on the related site. For instance, NASA has posted guidelines on Using NASA Imagery and Linking to NASA Web Sites, and the U.S. government has posted this explanation of Copyright and Other Rights Pertaining to U.S. Government Works.

• Finding Public Domain Images for Multimedia Projects, from EdTechTeacher. Note that some of the links on this page are out of date.
• Public Domain Material: Images, Audio, Scores & Books from Ithaca College
• Public Domain Collections: Free to Share & Reuse from the New York Public Library
• The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix, from Open Culture.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art makes 400,000 iconic works available for download
• Library of Congress Photos on Flickr
• Selected Internet Resources — Government Resources for Science Images and Video, from the Library of Congress
• Official U.S. Government Photostreams on Flickr
• FedFlix (US Government movies)
• Search for photos on USA.gov
• National Park Service Digital Image Archive
• Freesound Creative Commons Archive (audio)
• Free YouTube Music and Sound Effects
• Creative Commons Search
• Public domain image resources list on Wikipedia Help

• The graphics need to be free of copyright restrictions (unless they fit the definition of fair use), or you must obtain permission to use them. [More on this topic in the next section.]
• Photos and/or illustrations should accurately depict the information in the document. Avoid images that are simply decorative.
• The images should be crisp and well-lit.
• Garish, clashing, and overly colorful images are a poor choice. Think about the image and the rest of the design on the page as you make a choice.
• Background noise should be eliminated. There should be nothing irrelevant or distracting in the image. Avoid photobombs!
• The text should refer to the pictures, and the graphics should work in harmony with the written text.