Catholic Art for PowerPoint slides

[Pioro]

Hi,

I figure if anyone can help me with this problem, someone here can!

I work in Eastern Europe helping to coordinate Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation Masses in English. If you’ve been to Eastern Europe, you may have noticed that instead of ‘misalettes,’ there’s often a screen near the altar, and slides of the hymns are flashed on this screen - everyone follows the words on the screen. Here, everyone has the Mass memorized; they don’t need slides to respond to the Mass, but in English they need them. So in our English Mass, we have the hymns as well as the responses to the Mass.

Our ‘style’ is to have a ‘first’ slide that announces the Sunday or feast (5th Sunday in Ordinary Time; the Assumption, etc.). We like to have a work of art on this slide, if we can. Of course, the art should be beautiful and should connect with the Gospel of the day or with the season or feast. Most of the time, we have a simple colored slide with no art, just words, because we can’t find art.

I’ve been searching online for truly beautiful, truly Catholic art. I can go to the Microsoft clip art site and get cartoons or line-drawings or other ‘cheap’-looking stuff. It’s not what we want, though. I’m looking for Giotto, van Eyck, El Greco, Fra Angelico - the kind of full-colour, beautiful, classic art that you find in the Didache Series of catechism textbooks, for example.

I haven’t been able to find these online, and I’m stumped. I’ve seen them on e-mail post cards and I’ve seen such illustrations on some Catholic websites. I’m sure they can’t be copyright. So where do people get them? I hope they don’t scan them from books - we have the books; we haven’t got a scanner.

It would be great if I could download or copy and paste (onto PowerPoint slides) beautiful, traditional Catholic art for the major feasts of the Church as well as artworks illustrating the Gospels. I just have no idea where to find it online.

A few conditions, though: we have no money! If it costs, we can’t use it. And line-drawings, black & white images, photographs of statues, or ‘cartoon’-like drawings are not what we’re looking for.

If anyone can suggest websites, I’d be most appreciative. If scanning is the only way, we could probably find someone with a scanner - but how do you get it from scanned to a PowerPoint slide? (I’m not very computer savvy!)

Thanks a lot!

 

[jkarp]

Hi,

I figure if anyone can help me with this problem, someone here can!

I work in Eastern Europe helping to coordinate Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation Masses in English. If you’ve been to Eastern Europe, you may have noticed that instead of ‘misalettes,’ there’s often a screen near the altar, and slides of the hymns are flashed on this screen - everyone follows the words on the screen. Here, everyone has the Mass memorized; they don’t need slides to respond to the Mass, but in English they need them. So in our English Mass, we have the hymns as well as the responses to the Mass.

Our ‘style’ is to have a ‘first’ slide that announces the Sunday or feast (5th Sunday in Ordinary Time; the Assumption, etc.). We like to have a work of art on this slide, if we can. Of course, the art should be beautiful and should connect with the Gospel of the day or with the season or feast. Most of the time, we have a simple colored slide with no art, just words, because we can’t find art.

I’ve been searching online for truly beautiful, truly Catholic art. I can go to the Microsoft clip art site and get cartoons or line-drawings or other ‘cheap’-looking stuff. It’s not what we want, though. I’m looking for Giotto, van Eyck, El Greco, Fra Angelico - the kind of full-colour, beautiful, classic art that you find in the Didache Series of catechism textbooks, for example.

I haven’t been able to find these online, and I’m stumped. I’ve seen them on e-mail post cards and I’ve seen such illustrations on some Catholic websites. I’m sure they can’t be copyright. So where do people get them? I hope they don’t scan them from books - we have the books; we haven’t got a scanner.

It would be great if I could download or copy and paste (onto PowerPoint slides) beautiful, traditional Catholic art for the major feasts of the Church as well as artworks illustrating the Gospels. I just have no idea where to find it online.

A few conditions, though: we have no money! If it costs, we can’t use it. And line-drawings, black & white images, photographs of statues, or ‘cartoon’-like drawings are not what we’re looking for.

If anyone can suggest websites, I’d be most appreciative. If scanning is the only way, we could probably find someone with a scanner - but how do you get it from scanned to a PowerPoint slide? (I’m not very computer savvy!)

Thanks a lot!

www.sxc.hu is an open source (GPL) stock photography site (be sure to check the license of each image you plan to use because the site also has “Premium” content that is not GPL). You can use the GPL images for your presentations (again read the license for each image). The following search should return Catholic related images:

sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=search&txt=catholic&w=1

You can minimize the Premium results (they will be on top). If the link doesn’t work, just go to the site and do a search for “catholic”.

Also, I clicked through the first 10 pages of the search results for “catholic” and the images all seem to be okay but I have no idea if there are also inappropriate images on the site - as with anything on the internet: be cautious.

 

[Pioro]

Thank you, Jkarp, for responding so promptly. I’ve looked through all the images. Mostly they seem to be photographs of ‘things’ which is why I suppose some would be copyrighted. I guess I should have said that what I’m looking for is paintings - Renaissance stuff, but not always, of course. I’ll bookmark the page you’ve suggested because sometimes the priests refer to some ‘real’ place (a church, for example) and like to have a picture of it while they are talking about it in a homily. This might be useful in those cases.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep searching for all those gorgeous things I learned to love in art history classes!

Pioro

 

[KarenElissa]

I’ve used Wikipedia when I want old religious art. Say you want a pic for the Annunciation, you just search for it(here) and there is often art in the actual article. Also, if you scroll down, there will be a link to wikimedia commons where there is usually more art (here).

 

[Pioro]

KarenElissa, you’re BRILLIANT! I tried it. It works! I’m thrilled.

This is just wonderful. I suppose I can also go to various artists or the exact paintings I want and look them up and – HURRAY! I suppose the reasonable response is to say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ But I often don’t think of very practical, sensible solutions to things. God bless these forums!

Most of the time, the Internet feels like something that takes too much time I could use better. (I need to find out how to disconnect the time sucking device that turns on on my computer every time I go online - any ideas for that?). But in a case like this, I think it’s great. Here I am sitting in my living room in Poland, with no one around who can answer my question. I go to the CA forum and within a very short time someone clever person (probably thousands of miles away) gives me the answer! Terrific!

Thank you so much. We’re going to have such lovely slides now.

Bless you!

 

[Revere1618]

I’ve found that google images is also indispensible for such searches… let me know if there are any other adjustments with H/W ratio, clarity, color balance, contrast, text etc. you may need… I have a scanner, a lot of art books and many appropriate graphics software programs.

 

[jkarp]

I’ve found that google images is also indispensible for such searches… let me know if there are any other adjustments with H/W ratio, clarity, color balance, contrast, text etc. you may need… I have a scanner, a lot of art books and many appropriate graphics software programs.

You need to be careful and observe copyrights on images if you’re just using Google’s image search. Unless you have direct permission from the owner of the photographs or pictures you have to assume that you do not have copyright permission. I recommended the stock photo exchange because they provide license to use the images; the Wikipedia suggestion is also an excellent idea because they also provide a list of acceptable uses of the images found on their site (not all images on Wikipedia are free for public use). Simply grabbing images found on the internet is illegal - and an especially bad idea if you are using them for public viewing (as the OP is).

 

[Revere1618]

hmmm… good points. A couple of thoughts though: I beleive that art such as that from the old masters is considered public domain… not sure how to determine that for sure… as far as more modern art or photography, (seeing as most art is at least partially inspired from something that came before it) the guideline was that you could use a preexistant piece as a referance provided you made 35% additions or change etc. and acknowledgement of the “donor” art depending on the “venue.” --just thinking out loud.

 

[jkarp]

hmmm… good points. A couple of thoughts though: I beleive that art such as that from the old masters is considered public domain… not sure how to determine that for sure…

Even though the subject of a photograph may be public domain, the photograph itself is not necessarily public domain.

as far as more modern art or photography, (seeing as most art is at least partially inspired from something that came before it)

Again, the photograph is the copyrighted item, not the subject of the photograph.

the guideline was that you could use a preexistant piece as a referance provided you made 35% additions or change etc. and acknowledgement of the “donor” art depending on the “venue.” --just thinking out loud.

I’m not sure where you got that number but it is totally invented and won’t stand up in court. Here is a link regarding actual **fair use **law:
copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Even if what you plan to do would probably fall under fair use, it is still considered good practice to obtain permission before using the work; this is just plain courtesy to the copyright holder.

 

[KarenElissa]

Even though the subject of a photograph may be public domain, the photograph itself is not necessarily public domain.

Again, the photograph is the copyrighted item, not the subject of the photograph.

A photo of an image that is in the public domain and is essentially just a copy of the original image is not protected by copyright.

The Court ruled that reproductions of images in the public domain are not protected by copyright if the reproductions are slavish or lacking in originality.

In their opinion, the Court noted: ‘‘There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection… But ‘slavish copying’, although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify.’’

In other words, an exact reproduction of an image in the public domain does not possess creativity itself. Therefore, the reproduction is not protected under copyright law.

From here

So a google image search from a famous old painting would probably be ok, but a goggle image search for any picture of Mary may not be ok.

 

[jkarp]

A photo of an image that is in the public domain and is essentially just a copy of the original image is not protected by copyright.

From here

So a google image search from a famous old painting would probably be ok, but a goggle image search for any picture of Mary may not be ok.

That is a good article but again your advise is shaky. From the article you referenced:

''There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection… But ‘slavish copying’, although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify.

This says that the overwhelming majority of photographs out there are protected under copyright law and only images created by “slavish copying” are not protected. For example an exacting scan of a famous piece of art is most likely okay to use, but a snapshot taken at a slight angle by someone while on vacation is most likely not.

It seems to me that you’re treading on a very slippery slope and the best solution (and the one that will guaranteed not lead to a lawsuit) is to use images that you already have license to use, i.e. those with a license agreement or direct permission from the author.