Did you know that our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text? Then, you probably already know that good pictures are essential for capturing attention and conveying your message. But what do you do if you don’t have enough visual material or the opportunity to create it yourself? Here, we have listed several websites that offer free photos online.
NOTE: Remember always to read the license terms for the website. In most cases, the websites require you to credit the photographer or the website itself.
VECTEEZY
Vecteezy has an extensive library of lovely free stock images. A few advantages make this website stand out from other stock photo sites. First, the site has a more robust search engine that lets you filter photos by colour, orientation, style, number of people, age of the models, and more. Second, Vecteezy provides signed model and property releases for all free images where necessary. This protects users (and their designs) from any legal liability – a detail often overlooked by other free stock photo sites. Finally, Vecteezy’s content team members manually review each image submission for quality. This means that their photo collection is professionally curated, ensuring high quality.
FREEPIK
Freepik is a powerful search engine that helps users find free, high-quality stock images and other graphic resources such as vector images, illustrations and PSD files. Millions of graphic resources are available for download and can be used in any personal or professional design project. Freepik’s search engine also has powerful filters that help find all types of resources, orientations, colours, styles, etc. Freepik users can download graphic resource formats compatible with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.
MORGUE FILE
This page is also somewhat different. The images are not curated and not as professionally produced as on Unsplash or Gratisography. You’ll find photos of random people and everyday objects like your Aunt Sally shared her Google Photos stream with you. Morguefile is not the place to find big headlines, but if you need a simple free photo of a child brushing their teeth, this is the free stock photo site for you.
PIXABAY
This site has an extensive database of high-quality images. It is somewhat more oriented towards business and marketing than Unsplash, which is often helpful for content marketers and bloggers. Another great advantage of Pixabay is that it offers free vectors and illustrations.
STOCK VAULT
Stockvault is another excellent source of free stock images, wallpapers, and even textures. The collection is only about half the size of Unsplash, but it’s well-curated and has daily new additions. This site also has a good search engine and is well organized for browsing by category.
PEXELS
We can’t do a post about free stock photos without mentioning Pexels. Their vast, well-organized collection of free stock photos is one of the best curated online. Plus, they have free stock videos! Pexels is the image source of choice for many bloggers.
PICJUMBO
Run by a 24-year-old photographer who was tired of having his photos rejected by major stock sites and decided to create his own, PicJumbo is now a thriving free photo community with a massive selection of beautiful free photos.
RAW PIXELS
Rawpixel claims to have the industry’s most diverse collection of stock images – and it may be true. They also have vectors, PSD mockups and public domain content like famous Japanese wood panel prints. Their paid option contributes to Hope for Children.
RESHOT
More than just a simple photo collection, Reshot is a community with a mission. They aim to give emerging photographers a platform to share their creativity with those who need it. Their curated collections are extensive, unique and completely free.
PEXELS
It is a great platform that offers hand-picked royalty-free images under the Creative Commons Zero license agreement, also called CC0. This means that the images can be used for personal and commercial purposes without attribution, i.e. mentioning an author etc. The page’s excellent search function lets you quickly find the desired image.
STOCK SNAP
The motto “not to be a shitty stock photo site” is implemented by StockSnap.io very nicely. You can spend hours scrolling through the beautiful images and viewing the hand-picked masterpieces of royalty-free images. Definitely worth a couple of views/clicks because here, you can find images that are not available anywhere else.
BURST
One of the newer websites is Shopify (an online store provider). The goal is to give entrepreneurs access to good photos. Shopify creates many images internally and provides them under the CC0 license. However, some images are covered by the Shopify license. Therefore, you should be aware before using an image.
On Burst, you can find great royalty-free images, some of which you can download under the CC0 license. (Please note the license for each image!)
UNSPLASH
According to Unsplash, they publish ten royalty-free images that you can do anything with every ten days because they are also under CC0 and, therefore, license-free for all projects. The pictures are really of high quality and well chosen. The database of royalty-free images is also neatly sorted and helps you quickly find the right stock images.
At Unsplash, in particular, the selection of really high-quality images is excellent and has made it to MoreThanDigital’s personal favourites, which we use regularly.
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