The art work or printable images for schoolkids by WPClipart-image files

WPClipart image file

WPClipart is an ever-growing collection of artwork for schoolkids and others that is free of copyright concerns as well as safe from inappropriate images. Use in school research and reports is my main focus when creating, or finding and editing -- but there are photos and clips here that work great for commercial uses, book illustrations, office presentations, and some just for fun... 


All the images here are Public Domain. So enjoy, come back often and tell your friends! 


On 11/08/2011 there are 35,600 unique images, most in multiple formats, yielding a total of 91,952 images to download here at wpclipart. (Plus any you generate using the online image editor :)
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
Image search is inter-site, and as such is safe and fast. I have written and implimented an algorithm that outputs thumbnail image links of to up to 24 images as the main search results, along with thumbnail links to directories of images to the right. I limit the results to simplify the search, and the listing of directories easily leads searchers to more results. Also, submitting the same search words will yield different results, as I have somewhat randomized what portion of the total results are shown. 


WPClipart into internet explorer or Firefox:click below

You can also add WPClipart as a seach provider to your browser. The small image below shows what it looks like if you were to use it to search for "cat cartoon". Enables you to open your browser and search wpclipart, without even visiting the site! 


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 (one per page) to eliminate confusion and 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. Browse though American History, flags, geography (maps) and other sections to see what I mean... 


Integrate WPClipart into OpenOffice 
If you Download zipped folders of wpclipart, it is easy to integrate all the images into OpenOffice. Do this as so: 
Start OpenOffice.org
Click Tools->Options
Click ->paths
Click Graphics
Click Edit
Select the path to the WPClipart files
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.




Image file formats
PNG was chosen as the default format because it is lossless but compressed -- meaning it retains a higher image quality than JPG, makes a much smaller file size than a .tiff, is better supported and versatile than an SVG (especially to convert to/from), and finally, GIF images simply have too limited a color palette. 


Despite false information spread by some overzelous SVG supporters, PNG is lossless. From the PNG site at: libpng.org, "Since PNG's compression is fully lossless... restoring and re-saving an image will not degrade its quality..."  JPG versions of all images are now also available. These are especially useful for use with photographic images and keeping file size reasonable, but also if you link/post to websites, jpg is sometimes allowed while PNG is not. 


Transparent images are not used by default because this can cause printing problems with some word processors (AbiWord in particular.) Also, printers do not print white (the usual transparent color) -- so transparency in that case would not make any difference when printed. 


However, because folks often want to use these images on the Web (sometimes over backgrounds and colors), and also sometimes combine images, one image over part of another -- then preserving portions of the image that need to stay white (as opposed to transparent) becomes important. Because of this I very often have to selectively make portions of images transparent, which can be a bit time consuming. I have been working (un)steadily at it for some time now. Transparent PNG versions are becoming available for most all (non-photographic) images. 


And last but not least, SVG versions of images are now also beginning to be included.