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Michal Mazurek
Michal Mazurek

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at jasminek.net

A Small Warning About Unsplash

Unsplash is a great website. It's a free and open library with a ton of beautiful pictures. You can use them however you wish and you don't need to add attribution, though I'm sure your readers will think more highly of you if you do.

Sounds perfect, so where is the catch?

It's so great that it's the go to source of graphics for a lot of bloggers. The same images are reused over and over again.

I feel like this guy keeps following me everywhere:

Frustrated
This guy

I used that very same picture for my own article not long ago. Then I saw someone else using it as well. And then I saw it again. And again...

They know

Unsplash is well aware of the high volume of reuse and in December 2019 they decided to capitalize on it.
They know

What can you do?

Don't want your article to be part of a clone army? Then at least check your image with Google's Reverse Image Search before publishing.

Resources

Top comments (4)

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt

Unsplash is the best platform for beautiful and quality photos. It's really helpful that they're free and resourceful. Contrary to other platforms of this style where you have too strict conditions and images generally not beautiful, you will be sure that on this site you will have some.

In 2019 December, they came out Unsplash for Brands
medium.com/unsplash/introducing-un...

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akfaew profile image
Michal Mazurek

Thanks for the link. I updated this post to include it.

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akfaew profile image
Michal Mazurek

Yeah, me too. And then I found it on some other blog. And then again. And again...

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rimutaka profile image
Max

Heh. Nice dig, Michal.
I wonder if that guy that follows you is even aware he is stock. It looks like a casual pic taken with a smartphone.