Once upon a time, in my youth, I was told that "knowledge is free..." -- a foundation upon which was built the idea that with study, hard work and honesty you could not only earn a living but perhaps accomplish something worthwhile. Those were days when intelligence, calloused hands and strength of character were the measure of a man or woman. In these days when trivial ideas are patented, when copyrights last for a hundred years and all around you is talk of lawyers and money -- you may begin to think that the only thing important is what you own. But this is not so; the meaning of your life is not a measure of what you can grab and hold, it is defined by what you do. So do it well. Paul Sherman

What is WPClipart?

An educational resource that began its life as "AbiClipart" in 2003. The collection is a safe way for children to search for images for use in school projects (and of course, other folks find plenty of uses for the clip art and photos, also . . . )

Contact

If you wish to contact me for requests, to point out any errors or for any other purpose, feel free to email me (Paul Sherman) at psherman2001@gmail.com

About the collection . . .

The project started as a "safe" collection of clipart for my kids. Their middle school used AbiWord, and they were often searching for clipart that was both safe and copyright-free. Since this proved to be both difficult and hazardous (since image searches often yielded some very untoward photos) I decided to create a simple collection for their use. My background as both a photographer and a programmer lent itself well to the project, I put it online with my software for others to download and as the months passed it became very popular.

I made thumbnail pages and put up some Google ads, (made a bit of change every day), then suddenly the Google image search engine spidered the site and my server was a bit overwhelmed. After fielding 20-30k hits a day for a year or so I ended up putting the collection on a dedicated remote server, and the ad revenue takes care of the expense. And by using good image tagging and submitting XML sitemaps to Google with each update, the custom search function really helps track images down.

I did not expect to MAKE any money with the collection, so you won't see tons of ads and deceptive links or anything "tricky" to try to get clicks. The collection is self-suporting, and making it safe, useful and quick-loading are the ultimate goals. There is a Google ad atop each page clearly marked as such, so kids and everyone else can come by and find what they are looking for without being forced or tricked into viewing product information they are not interested in.

I would LIKE to do this full-time, but I am not sure I could "pay the bills" with the amount of revenue that comes from ads on an image site -- not without turning it into a ad-fest, and that would defeat the purpose of having the site in the first place . . .  The shear volume of traffic, however, may someday make this possible. -- I'm not complaining!

Changelog and Links

List of updates

Lists when and how many images I update to what sections. Updates to the downloadable are also listed, so you can see what has changed since the last package was released.

Links of substance

I have begun to reference specific sites that are used as resources for certain topics -- such as where the images came from and where there is information useful to further researching a topic. I have started with the Rocks and Minerals section which is slowly being completed . . .

There is also a large section of links devoted to Public Domain clipart information and resources.

Text-based Sitemap

Provides a text-only map of links to the site. Not really all that useful to us humans (if you take a look at how repetetive the section names can be) -- but ooooh, the Google search engine sure likes it! It is one of several reasons the in-site image search function works as well as it does.

Terms of Use

The images found here can be used for any purpose with only two conditions. [Also see the Legal page for details and a bit about "fair use" involving anything with a company logo, such as credit-card images.]

1. I ask that you do not directly link images from my site to other web pages (please copy them to your own site first.)


2. Also, I do not expect anyone to copy my site or the image collection (in large part -- i.e. as an image gallery) to host or sell elsewhere online. This would compete with my site, draining what revenue I generate through online ads. These pay for hosting and modestly compensate me for much ink I use in test printing and for the hundreds of hours I spend finding, creating and editing images.

   
   That said, feel free to pass around images or copies of the collection to all your friends and schoolmates. If you want to redistribute the collection as part of a GPL-ed OS (you know the one I mean), I would be delighted.
   
   And obviously, I hope, you can use any image, a handful of them -- even dozens, on your website; regardless if it is for school, a personal site or a commercial entity.

Purpose

  I started this clipart collection for my school-age children and clients to use:

• for anything they wanted without having to worry about any legal reprecussions
• for images modestly scaled, so they so would fit when dropped into documents
• not transparent, to avoid many printing problems.
• And lastly, the clips were meant to show off my GPL-ed (free) software application I call, simply, "wpclipper."

Viewer

  The full package includes a cross-platform viewer that is fast and can filter, rotate, enhance, convert images, send directly to a graphics editor or copy an image to the clipboard to paste into OpenOffice, Word, AbiWord, etc. The viewer (wpclipper) is written in Python/pyGTK but is precompiled in binary form for Windows (nothing to "install".) There is also a Linux source version in the "wpclipart_src" clipart package.


Image Details

  Some of the images were made by me, the vast majority were acquired from several sources all documented on the "Legal" page. One of the large sources was OpenClipart - from which the SVGs were converted using RSVG and scaled to proportions more appropriate for word processors, as opposed to much larger sizes you would expect for clipart to be further edited in a graphics program. As mentioned above, transparency was eliminated (avoiding many printing problems.) Many clips from other sources had their density and saturation levels adjusted to what would print well on a typical home/small business inkjet -- openning up the midtones and eliminating large areas of shadow to prevent blocking, bleeding backgrounds to white . . .

  Another advantage of scaling down the image sizes is the smaller download size. Ibiblio graciously hosts the files I display on these pages. There is a compressed package of all the clipart that in a ZIP file as well as a Windows installer package. See "Download" for details.



Summary

  Above all else these images, illustrations and photos are Public Domain. Use them for private use, for commercial use -- without any restrictions whatsoever. Attribution is not required. Links are not required. They are truly free.