Dreamwidth style system discussion

image searches are just junked up to hell. google, pinterest and duckduckgo's "no AI" filters do not fuckin work. so, here's a quick n dirty list of where i go now when i need some drawing reference. (i'm trying to focus mostly on BIG, barrier-free, searchable archives with lots of diverse content.)

caveat that's probably obvious: even the "AI-free" big stock websites probably have at least some AI lurking in them, because people who litter don't give a shit about "no littering" signs. for maximum safety, if an image looks sus to you and has a post date of 2023 or later, it may be best to cast it aside.


✪ big & searchable image archives

istockphoto, getty images, & shutterstock
https://www.istockphoto.com/ & https://www.gettyimages.com/ & https://www.shutterstock.com

MIRACULOUSLY, these have not yet fallen to AI. they will advertise their stupid AI "tools" loudly at you, but those are for modifying images after-the-fact. they do not actually allow generated images to be uploaded for sale. their size and popularity, along with the fact that stock photo sites tend to be good about specific keywords and descriptions, makes them ideal places to search. ime these sites were like half of google image results pre-AI-boom anyway LOL

pexels
https://www.pexels.com
free stock photo site. large selection, pretty good search tools. explicitly does not allow generative AI uploads.

pixabay
https://pixabay.com/
free stock photo site. requires AI images to be labeled and lets you filter for authentic images only. (unfortunately they aren't super diligent about moderating; be wary of images posted after about 2022. thanks for the heads up leigh)

unsplash
https://unsplash.com/
free stock photo site. explicitly does not allow generative AI uploads.

morguefile
https://morguefile.com/
another free stock photo site! this one doesn't have an explicit policy about AI, but they are a long-standing institution. my test searches didn't turn up anything that smelled off to me. not 100% guaranteed AI-free, but i do guarantee as of this writing, it's 500% less polluted than google.

flickr
https://www.flickr.com/search/
not completely AI-free, but it hasn't been cool since yahoo instant messenger still existed, so the clankers mostly ignore it. GREAT search tools, lots of Creative Commons stuff, you can even use advanced search to narrow your search by date to pre-AI-boom times. heads up, this is one of the rare big long-standing gallery sites that still allows some NSFW images, so be warned if you don't use the filters DICKS WILL BE ON YOUR SCREEN. (i guess that probably also means you could find nude reference there.)

the wikimedia commons (thanks for the suggestion, pagodrink!)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/
huge, searchable database, and while it's not 100% AI-free, they're pretty strict about AI. (additional info here.) The vast majority of Wikimedia images are authentic. also fun because the images you'll get here usually have more context around them than a random stock photo. keep in mind: wikimedia is an educational resource that does not shy away from potentially upsetting content. graphic images of human and animal suffering/injury/corpses can easily turn up in searches, and there's not really a way to filter them out. (my test search for "mouse" returned some pretty gory photos of dead mice!) this isn't a criticism, just a warning for those who might be more sensitive.

the internet archive
https://archive.org/
can be a little tricky and clunky to use at times, but filters can often turn up interesting stuff you won't find in other places. definitely not AI-free but can be filtered by date to pre-AI-boom uploads. lots of books here, btw. books with IMAGES in 'em.

the base mesh
https://www.thebasemesh.com/
a fantastic growing archive of basic 3D models of common objects. easy to download and view an object at an angle.

reference angle
http://referenceangle.com/
a much more specific tool. pose the 3D head, search, get photos of real humans at the angle of the head. try it out. shit rocks

animal photo art reference search (thanks for the suggestion, seb!)
https://x6ud.github.io/#/
it does what reference angle does... but for animals!!! KICKS ASS.

same energy (thanks for the suggest, animtrash!)
https://same.energy
works a lot like pinterest's previously excellent visual search and doesn't seem to turn up heinous amounts of slop (i tested with some keywords: beautiful girl, castle, scifi city, etc. and didn't really see anything that set off the alarms). you can upload an image or keyword search. left click on an image to get more results similar. right-click to see the source and enlarge the image. to be totally clear, this does use machine learning-- it would have to! but it's the kind of machine learning stuff that was in use and actually useful before the Besloppening of All Things.

zerochan & safebooru
https://www.zerochan.net/ & https://safebooru.org/
these aren't without problems and i do not post them uncritically; unsourced posting (and reposting without permission, usually from JP artists on pixiv and twitter) are long-standing problems on these sites. BUT they also house a lot of official/promo art from various anime and games, and they have pretty meticulously detailed tagging. if you're looking to figure out how to stylize a specific thing, they can help. zerochan forbids slop, safebooru allows it (put -ai_generated in your search to exclude most of it). try searching "official art" on both if you want to exclude stuff yoinked from pixiv and twitter with dubious permission. as an aside, i also highly recommend the Character Design References Visual Library for finding all sorts of examples of how professional artists do their thing.

animal photo reference repository (ty epsi for the suggestion)
https://www.animal-photo-references.com
repository of photos of lots of different kinds of animals! nothing here is generative. "Artists creating derivative or transformative works without Generative AI have blanket permission to reference these photos." (look at theeeeeeeeese...)

iNaturalist (ty for the suggestion Luna!)
https://www.inaturalist.org/
tons of photos of animals, easily narrowed down to specific species. great search tools. heads up: includes dead animals! but if you absolutely don't wanna accidentally see a dead animal, you'll want to narrow your searches to "alive". if you DO need to see a dead one you can narrow to that too. (horror artists, rejoice.)

vishopper (ty gingervitis!)
https://www.vishopper.com/
a more specialized stock image library-- "creator and distributor of cut out images and textures for architectural visualization". LOTS to see here; humans, animals, plants, backgrounds, neatly cut-out from photos for compositing. unfortunately allows AI images but also lets you exclude them from searches. (search narrowing tools are also great here.)

✪ more specific stuff

smithsonian open access (thank you deramin for the suggestion!)
https://www.si.edu/openaccess
lots of content, lots of it copyright-free. since it's a museum, a lot of this is going to be more on the historical side. they have some 3D scans of things that are pretty neat and viewable in-browser-- look at this crab!

swordis (ty for the suggestion gingervitis) & museum replicas limited
https://swordis.com/ & https://museumreplicas.com/
these are stores, but they've got a ton of good high-quality photos of different types of melee weapons. museum replicas limited also has a lot of what i'd call renfaire-wear, a lot of it historically accurate!

roomstyler (ty jurplepicks!)
https://roomstyler.com/3dplanner
build a 3D room for background reference!

art libraries
https://www.creativeuncut.com/ - video game concept & official art
settei dreams - anime production art
characterdesignreferences - "character-focused art within the realms of animation, illustration, games, and comics"

clothes!
https://urstyle.fashion - remember polyvore? it's polyvore 2
https://vintagedancer.com - my go-to for historical fashion from the victorian era through the 1990s
https://same.energy/ - mentioned above, seems pretty good for searching specific style keywords
suitpic - not very searchable as it's a bluesky feed, but INVALUABLE suit reference
https://tokyofashion.com/ - japanese street fashion! really cool stuff here!
https://www.osfcostumerentals.org/OSF-Costume-Rentals - a good place to start looking for any period fashion

great stock photo reference by & for artists! (suggested by many!)
adorkastock, trueref, theposearchives, nullentitystock, sambeawesome, jookpubstock, fatphotoref, nyxnaiastock

figure drawing tools by & for artists! (suggested by many!)
posemaniacs, line of action, quickposes, rkgk, sketchdaily, adorkastock

poseable 3d models! (ty splanet!)
posemy.art, justsketchme, magicposer, designdoll

✪ suggestions welcome
comments on this blog entry are open even if you don't have a dreamwidth account. keep in mind i'm not looking to make a full list of all the art resources online; the goal here is to patch the google-shaped hole left by AI. some ideal criteria:

• free
• low friction (no barriers to entry, ideally about as quick and easy to use as google)
• AI shit not allowed OR easy to avoid/exclude from search
• images should have sources
• good search narrowing tools/categorization/etc.
• broad range of content; likely to return a lot of varied images, rather than just one or two pictures of something
• lots of creative commons/public domain stuff is a huge bonus

✪ did this help you? spread it around!
some shareable posts on different websites that link back to this list:
bluesky, mastodon, tumblr, pillowfort, cara
some people get a 403 error; send them to the archive.org page.