Research Guides: Visual Literacy: Image &amp; Media Resources

Color Palettes

Color Extraction from TinEye
Displays a color palette for all the colors identified in your image. Color extraction works for JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs.
Multicolr from TinEye
MulticolorEngine extracts the colors from 20 million Creative Commons images on Flickr to make the images searchable by color.

Image Research Help

Do you need help finding specific images in LUNA or on the Web but can't make it to the library to talk to the Visual Resources Librarian? Submit your question and our Visual Resources Librarian will get back to you, usually within 24 hours, Monday through Friday.

Image Databases

Art Images for College Teaching
A personal, non-profit project of its author, art historian and visual resources curator Allan T. Kohl. Images have been photographed on location by the author, who consents to their use in any application that is both educational and non-commercial in nature.
Artstor Public Collections
More than 1 million image, video, document, and audio files from public institutional collections freely available to everyone. Eclectic collections that fall into a multitude of categories, including special collections, faculty research and fieldwork, and museum and gallery collections.
Artsy
Database comprised of a growing collection of over 50,000 artworks and 11,000 artists from hundreds of galleries, museums and foundations. More than 25,000 images are currently in the public domain, and available for download for teaching and research purposes.
The British Museum Online Collection
Almost 800,000 records in this database have images available for research purposes, some with multiple views.
California State Library Picture Catalog Collections
Search a selection of photographs and historic images from the California State Library's rich collections of photographs, prints, drawings, and sheet music.
CalPhotos
CalPhotos is a collection of over 500,000 photos of plants, animals, fossils, people, and landscapes from around the world. Includes images from The Manzanita Project, a curated collection of natural images from the California Academy of Sciences Library.
Digital Imaging Project, Bluffton University
Historical images of sculpture and architecture, from pre-historic to post-modern, photographed by Mary Ann Sullivan, Professor Emerita of English and Art History, Bluffton University.
Digital Scriptorium
Image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts from the holdings of different institutions for teaching and scholarly research.
Europeana
Explore millions of digital resources from Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections, including images, texts, sound, and videos.
Flickr Commons
Access to hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives.
freeimages
Free stock photography database with access to hundreds of thousands of high-quality, handpicked stock photos and graphics. Activation of a personal membership account is required for full access but there is no cost to join.
George Eastman House Photo Collections
A steadily growing digital image sampler and browsing resource for the vast photography holdings of George Eastman House.
Getty Search Gateway
Search across several of the Getty repositories, including collections databases, library catalogs, collection inventories, and archival finding aids. Thousands of images are now available without restrictions and free of charge through the Open Content Program.
Google Arts & Culture
A collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums enables people to view artwork online in extraordinary detail.
Virtually move around the museum’s galleries using Google’s Street View technology.
Google LIFE Magazine Photo Archive
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.
The Internet Archive
Provides access to a wide variety of texts, audio, moving images, software, and archived web pages.
Library of Congress American Memory Project
Free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
Contains digital images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and other units of the Library of Congress.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
More than 20,000 high quality images currently in the public domain and available for download.
National Gallery of Art: NGA Images
NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration. More than 20,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
Includes free and open access to over 700,000 images. Includes illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
Pexels
Free stock photos you can use everywhere. ✓ Free for commercial use ✓ No attribution required.
Pixabay
Pixabay.com is an international, copyleft and free-to-use website for sharing photos, illustrations, vector graphics, film footage and music.
Rijks Studio
High-resolution and copyright-free images of 125,000 pieces of artwork that can be downloaded for free for creative use. Users can choose to download entire images or just details of works, and save sets of images.
Smithsonian Institution Collections Search Center
Search thousands of images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other resources from the Smithsonian's museums, archives & libraries.
Unsplash
Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos.
Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)
Search over 370,000 images from this world-renowned museum of art and design. Many images can be downloaded after registering for a free account.
Visual Arts Data Services
Contains over 100,000 images that are copyright cleared for educational and research usage. Images are organized into 44 distinct collections that range from textiles to graphic design to photography.
The Walters Art Museum
Thousands of high-quality digital images available for download from the museum’s collection of world art.
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content, including images, sound and video clips.
World Digital Library
The World Digital Library (WDL) makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures from around the world on one site.
Yale Digital Content
Search 250,000 digital assets from Yale's collections of art, natural history, books, and maps, as well as photos, audio, and video.

Luna Image Database

LUNA Digital Image Collections This link opens in a new window
Search over 330,000 images, including over 114,000 works of art from the collections of contributing museums, universities and archives. Architectural photographs, gardens and landscapes, political Americana, historical maps, fashion plate collections and much more.

Images from the Saskia Gardner's Art through the Ages art history set.
The AMICA Library, which contains over 95,000 works of art from the collections of contributing museums.
Architectural photographs, gardens and landscapes, political Americana, historical maps, fashion plate collections and much more.
LUNA tutorials provide information on navigating LUNA, creating Media Groups, and more. Tutorials include:
- How-to Guide: Getting Started with LUNA (PDF)
- Introduction to LUNA Media Groups (PDF)
- Introduction to LUNA Presentations (PDF)
The following LUNA Search Guides are available:

In addition to LUNA, the library has a curated list of image resources on our D igital Images page.

How to Save Metadata from LUNA

At this time, images exported from LUNA do not include the accompanying metadata. Metadata provides the information necessary for identification and citation of an image.

This guide gives recommended methods to enable you to save image metadata so you will be able to quickly and easily access this information for your research and studies.