Not quite The first step is to figure out how copyright and free licensing works For the most part every creative work that anyone creates in the US and most other countries is automatically copyrighted This can include artwork graphics music etc Copyright means what it sounds like  the right to copy and that lies with the author of the image Now you cant simply use another persons copyrighted work without their permission sure you can put together a graphic and post it on reddit and nothing will likely happen  were talking from a technical and legal point of view though If I make a painting and you take that painting and stick it on a shirt and sell it without my permission I could potentially take you to court There is an exception to this called fair use in the United States and fair dealing in some other places Since Wikimedia is based in the US well look at it from a US perspective fair usage allows you to use a copyrighted work without permission with the following factors taken into consideration   The purpose and character of the use including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes   The nature of the copyrighted work   The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole   The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work Its a case by case basis but fair use allows for example Wikipedia to display short samples of songs in its articles or a lowresolution picture of Mario in the Mario article all without permission But fair use is a whole other topic  back to copyright This is where the free license movement and the Creative Commons step in The Creative Commons are a suite of licenses that allow authors to license their works in a way that allow anyone to use them as long as the original author is attributed There are other optional limitations such as not allowing people to use your work for commercial purposes or requiring anyone that uses your work to license their derivative under a similar license The Wikimedia Commons is a host of free media for anyone to use for any purpose including commercial This free license movement has lead to hundreds of millions of works being made available for all to use freely often for educational purposes For example I myself have seen a couple of my freely licensed images appear in news articles or educational publications  its a nice thing to contribute to So this hopefully answers your question about whether or not you can create a work for the Commons that is composed of other images You can as long as the images you are using are also freely licensed Remember the point of free licenses is the let people to use works for their own purposes without seeking permission If the images are copyrighted or show no sign of free licensing you dont have the right to copy the work to use in your own work And yes you should cite the sources of all the works that go into your own even if theyre in the public domain  claiming them as your own work is plagiarism I know this is a lot to hit you with and it is a broad overview so feel free to ask for clarification or more details   Contribs