Clip art and photos

  WPClipart is a collection of high-quality public domain images specifically tailored for use in word processors and optimized for printing on home/small office inkjet printers. There are thousands of color graphic clips as well as illustrations, photographs and black and white line art. Nearly all are available in lossless, PNG format. The wpclipart server is also able to convert any image (up to 600 pixels in width or height) to a JPG, if that image format is desired.
As of Wednesday, 06/10/2009 there are 32,553 images.



Clip of the Day

Young Peaches My pride and joy. My lone peach tree is only about 7 feet tall, but I get dozens of peaches every year. These are just little guys that I spied out with my Olympus E500 using a 35mm macro lens. I like to walk around the yard in the early evening about an hour before sunset -- that time of the day called "the hour of magic light" by many photographers. It is a great time to make images because of the light quality, warm and not too contrasty. The image is now part of the "Paul's Garden" section of plants. Also added some others including my Wife's favorite, her Lupine. But I can't eat those...

Finding Images

• Browse

  View the thumbnail pages of images from the "index" page in each folder. There are 48 top-level folders, and they contain thumbnail images and usually several subfolders.



• Search

  WPClipart uses its own database application to search for images on-site.
  
  Search is available from every page as you browse. It will return up to 24 images, limited for speed -- but if you do not find what you are looking for right away, try to be more specific because multiple words can be used and should enable you to find exactly what you want.
  
  You can also add the WPClipart search to your browser. This enables you to search the images at wpclipart safely and quickly from anywhere, anytime. Click on the image below to add the custom search to IE7+ or Firefox2+ browsers.
  
  

Integrate WPClipart into OpenOffice

Whether you Download the Windows installer version or the simple compressed package of wpclipart, it is easy to integrate all the images into OpenOffice. Do this as so:

1. Start OpenOffice.org
2. Click Tools->Options
3. Click ->paths
4. Click Graphics
5. Click Edit
6. Select the path to WPClipart files
7. OK

When you go to "Insert > Picture", WPClipart directory will show up. Be sure to check the bottom button for PREVIEW, which makes browsing for the images much easier. (I actually find the wpclipart viewer/editor easier to use, but many folks use just the clipart...)

Purpose:

 WPClipart is a fast, clean and safe site for children and others to find good-quality, printable images that have no copyright restrictions. All the images are in the Public Domain. Ads on pages are minimal to make the site as fast as possible.

While there are literally thousands of "fun" images -- I take great pains to find, edit and retouch images of historical and/or general educational value. (Legal and Sources page) Browse though American History, flags, geography (maps) and other sections to see what I mean...

While I realize folks trying to be courteous will generally want to ask first, I get several requests a day and responding to each becomes time consuming. I would feel badly if I were to ignore someone's email... so please, feel free to use the images with my unwritten blessing : ) The only REQUEST I make is that you do not use large numbers of the images in another ONLINE gallery or application -- therefore competing with wpclipart in image searches. If you have any questions you are welcome to email me. But please take a peek at the "legal" and/or the "legal FAQ" pages first... one of them may have the answer to your question.

Image file formats

PNG was chosen as the default format because it is lossless but compressed -- meaning it is of higher quality than JPG, but much smaller than a .tiff file which is often used by printers as it, too, is lossless.

Transparent images are not used by default because this can cause printing problems with some word processors (AbiWord in particular.) I have, due to request, been updateing and making transparent PNG versions of the images available. JPG versions of any image (up to 600 pixels largest dimension) are also available, generated by the WPClipart server. Because very large images will tie up the server I will be manually generating larger JPG images.

I have struggled to balance what image types are available (how wide a variety) with how their links are displayed. The default link is to the PNG version of the full size image. (I was linking directly -- but this led to a server load so high I could not FTP during the day, and ad revenue went from bad to worse... I'm still hoping the site will once again make enough off ads to sponsor the clipart contest for school kids.) The other link generates a page with all possible formats. That page is scripted to search for what is available and then display the possibilities to the visitor.

I am in process of creating all appropriate transparent images which is time consuming because I do not simply make the background color transparent, as this would make overlaid images "bleed" into each other in areas of the images where this would not be appropiate. I make the background color transparent where there is no detail. You will see the difference when you plop on image partially over the top of another and you can properly see details of each image.

I've been doing much more editing and re-editing than previously, lots of things get improved or moved around. The site search definitely makes finding images easier, especialy since a general Google/Yahoo image search does not update fast enough to keep up with the WPClipart changes. (General image searches usually update only once every several months.)

Retouching examples

There are loads of "fun" images at WPClipart, but a big part of what is being attempted here has to do with historical/research value. Maps, geography, flags, historical figures, American History, rocks and minerals, religion, mythology -- these are not popular or fashionable image groups, but they can be quite useful in documentation, school papers and, ultimately, to enable people to get a more visceral feel for who and what the images represent.

Toward this end I have done a lot of retouching of images, at times taking some "artistic license" by manipulating the originals. I can attest that in the case of historical photos, this is never done with an eye to change any impression put forward by the original -- editing is done first and foremost to ensure that if a visitor needs to reprint the image, usually scaled down and on a modest inkjet printer, then the details of the image will still be visible.

For a few examples of historical figures see the retouched examples page

Downloading

Despite the serious advantage of using the online search function, there are times when internet access is not available. With that in mind, the entire collection can be downloaded as a package or in parts (each of the 48 sections.) Downloads are hosted by both ibiblio and SourceForge. See the download page for the Windows installer or the bz2-compressed versions of the collection, as well as zipped sections of clip art.

The full downloads also come with a viewer/editor application I programmed in pyGTK. It is not needed to use the graphics, but it serves 3 very useful purposes:

1. Browse the collection with nice size thumbnails


2. Quick and simple edits to rotate, filter or adjust color/brightness of images


3. COPY TO CLIPBOARD function, which means that if you have a document open in Word, OpenOffice, AbiWord or others - you just PASTE and you have the image in your document. No need to navigate through menus to insert a picture and then have to search through your machine.
   With wpclipper just copy to clipboard, and back in your document paste. Sweet.

More about WPClipart

For terms of use, changelogs and some background information about this site and the images, see the about page. Individual images are PD -- the site and collection are copyright of Paul Sherman.

All the photographs I take are now done with an Olympus E-500. They are most noticeable in "plants/Pauls_Garden", but mostly I use a macro lens to digitize images from out-of-copyright books. Many of the images in fictioal characters, American History, world history, some computer parts -- my daughters eye closeup -- and images from several other sections were either digitized or created using my Olympus.

Privacy Policy

WPClipart uses advertising from Google and Tribal Fusion. These are both high-quality advertisers without intrusive or confusing (is it page content or an ad?) materials. There is always only one ad per page. That said, these are contexual advertisers, and as such they use anonymous cookies on the user's machine to track web visiting habits. To clarify -- although cookies are used, no personally-identifiable information is obtained or stored.

Since both these advertisers are part of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) you have the ability to OPT OUT of the use of their tracking cookies. Ads are still served, just no cookie is used, and no tracking information is collected as you visit. To opt out of the tracking, visit:
the NAI opt-out page

Once there, simply check the advertisers whose cookies you would like to stop, then click submit.

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WPClipart collection: clipart and photos optimized for use with word processors and inkjet printers. Images are Public Domain and may be used for commercial as well as personal projects without attribution or linking. See the Legal page for more information and a list of sources. All images have been edited with the GIMP on Absolute Linux. Additional resources for the GIMP including brushes, scripts and tutorials are available on gimphelp.org.