Although graphics can take longer to prepare, they can be much more powerful than written text in a Poster Presentation. Try including a focus image (or series of images) near your title or at the center of your poster. Select a graph, chart, picture, or drawing that will attract your audience's attention and enlarge it so that it will occupy at least 30% of the area of the finished poster.
If you are not creating your own images (i.e., a graph, chart or drawing) and are instead looking online for an image to use, you will need to consider the copyright implications. Even images found online have copyright. If you would like to use an image in your poster, you can do so by: Getting permission from the image's copyright owner; Buy images from a stock photo site; Use an image that is in the Public Domain or has a Creative Commons license; Create your own images or take your own photos. The following section details some online image repositories where you can find images that are free to use.
Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.
The National Library of Medicine's Digital Collections allow you to search for historical medical images. This resources allows you to refine your search by copyright status, and uses MeSH terminology for searching. The Images from the History of Medicine Collection (IHM) is a great collection if you are looking for vintage Chinese medicine art.
The Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that includes a huge online digital collection. Most of the resources have Creative Commons licenses, and are free to use as long as you provide attribution to the Wellcome Collection.
Flickr allows you to filter search results by license.
By filtering the "Usage Rights" in a Google Image search, you can see images that allow for reuse. If you are not planning on making money from or otherwise selling your poster presentation, you can select "Labeled for noncommercial reuse" to get the most results.
