My preference is always to use visuals I’ve created in order to better showcase my own creative design aesthetic and abilities. Also, I strongly believe it is important as a professional designer and educator to avoid copyright infringement…although I’m sure there have been times when I’ve missed the mark. When I don’t easily have my own visuals available, I have had good luck finding relevant free-to-use and royalty-free images via Pixabay, Unsplash, Freeimages, and The Commons in Flickr. In addition, I’ve found that some images on Flickr have generous Creative Commons licensing (see Finding Public Domain & Creative Commons Media for more information).
For example, here are photos found using the search term online education:
From Pixabay
From Unsplash
If allowed by the copyright, I like to modify images to better suit my design. There are many free apps available for image editing and modification such as Gimp and Gimpshop. I tend to use quick and easy tools — my favorites are DeepArt, Canva Photo Editor, Fotor, Adobe Photoshop Express, and BeFunky — and get great results!
Modified in Deepart
Modified in BeFunky
If you have other tools and techniques, please share. 🙂