License

Everything Lede makes is free to use - no account, no fee, and no attribution required, for personal or commercial work.

The images you export

Every cover, featured, and Open Graph image you compose and download from Lede is yours. Use it anywhere, for personal or commercial work, with no credit line, no sign-up, and no fee. You do not owe Lede attribution, though a mention is always welcome.

Lede never uploads your work. Composing and exporting run entirely in your browser, so the file you save is the only copy unless you share it yourself.

Lede's own artwork

The gallery templates, the type-led covers on this blog, and the diagrams inside posts are made by Lede. They are free to use under the same terms: copy them, adapt them, or start a design from one and ship the result wherever you like.

The covers and templates Lede publishes on this site carry license metadata in the page itself, so Google Images can show a "Licensable" badge on them that links back here. Lede never watermarks an image - that metadata lives in the page's HTML, never stamped on the picture.

Covers built on a stock photo

Some blog covers composite a photograph that is credited under the post. That photo is licensed by the photographer, not by Lede. The design Lede lays over it - the type, layout, and treatment - is free, but the underlying photo keeps its own license. Follow the credit link for its terms before reusing the photo on its own.

This is why only Lede's photo-free artwork carries that "Licensable" badge in image search. The Unsplash photos under those composites are free too, but under the Unsplash License, not Lede's. That license stays with the photo, so Lede does not relicense the whole composite as its own.

What you can and cannot do

You are free to:

• Use exported and Lede-made images for personal and commercial projects
• Modify, crop, recolor, and remix them
• Publish and redistribute them as part of your own work

The few limits:

• Do not resell Lede's templates or artwork as a stock pack of their own
• Do not claim a stock photo inside a composite as your own - it stays the photographer's
• Do not imply that Lede endorses you or your project

Make your own

The fastest way to get a free-to-use image is to make one. Open the editor to start from scratch, or pick a gallery template and change the words.