Licensing for Personal Use

I have an extremely liberal policy towards personal use of my images. In fact, you do not have to ask me for explicit permission or pay any fee for personal use if it conforms to my definition. I define personal use as follows:

1. Displaying an image as desktop wallpaper on your computer. A computer (or printer) is “yours” for the purposes of this license if you use it at least 80% of the time, and if any other users of the computer, as well as its owner, also agree to these terms (which you warrant to me by using my images). The computer itself can be any kind of single-user computer (PC, Mac, etc.), including a portable computer. You must not make my images accessible to other people on your computer from a network, however (in other words, you cannot put my images into a shared folder on your computer for others to use, or the equivalent—others who would like to use my images for personal use can visit my site directly themselves).
2. Printing an image using your own computer and printer (as defined above), for non-computer display in your home (hanging on your wall, for example).
3. Printing an image using any other computer and printer to which you have authorized access, provided that the result is only for display in your individual office or cube, and provided that you remove the image from the computer (if it is not yours) after printing it, and provided that the owner and other users of the computer and printer agree not to claim any rights to the images simply because you used their equipment.

Note that use of my images on a personal Web site does not qualify as personal use; you always need to ask me permission for that.

Although you don't have to ask me or tell me about personal use as defined above, I still appreciate a note letting me know that you are using one or more of my images, if you are doing anything more than just looking at it on your browser or computer desktop. This is just so that I have some idea of how many people are using my images at home or office.

If your intended use doesn't meet the above criteria, and you are a student or teacher intending to use the image in some way at school, check out my School Licensing policy. Otherwise, if your use doesn't meet the above criteria, see my general policy on licensing for more information.

If someone sees the images you are using for personal use and wants a copy herself for personal use, please ask that person to visit my site to download them. The reason for this is that the only way I know which images are popular is by counting the number of people who download them; if people just make copies of my images I have no idea how popular they really are.

As always, contact me if you have any questions.

Image Licensing