One of the difficulties with creating a great presentation for church use (with OpenOffice.org Impress or Microsoft PowerPoint) is finding images that are legal to be used.  Most people to whom i talk about this are not aware that they are not legally entitled to use many (most?) images returned in search results without explicit written permission.

However, it's Creative Commons to the rescue! Creative Commons is a movement focused on encouraging free and open collaboration on different forms of content, including text, images, audio, and video. (You can read more about it on their web site.) You can search for Creative Commons-licensed content at:

• Flickr's advanced search - use the option "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content"
• Google advanced image search - select "labeled for reuse" under "Usage Rights"
• Yahoo advanced image search - select "Creator allows reuse"
• Creative Commons' search - provides more than just images

Also, most images on Wikipedia or other sites from the Wikimedia Foundation are freely reusable under conditions similar to Creative Commons (see the GNU Free Documentation license for more details).

When creating presentations, it is still wise to check the license details on the specific image you wish to use, but the above tools should make it much easier to find appropriate unencumbered images.  If you have other suggestions, please add them below - i would like to see this page develop into a more useful resource to make it easier for our church to create great multimedia presentations.

Perhaps the most important thing that we can do to improve the situation with respect to image searches is to contribute towards the growing body of free content. (For example, i've done this with my personal photography - at Picasa Web and my online gallery, for those who are interested). If we do this, then everyone can benefit, not just our church!