Oftenly I get attracted to websites and blog pages with beautiful demonstrated graphics and images. Guess I’m not the only one. Either you are a website builder or a theme/template developer or simply a blogger, it all comes the need to illustrate your artwork, themes or blog posts with impressive images.
Expensive commercial libraries like Bigstock, are always there to count on. Yet your wallet may not agree. To deal with restrained budget or unexpected copyright disputes, going for free services can do no harm. Woohoo! Free photos for both personal and commercial purposes, though commercial here doesn’t mean you are allow to resell those freebies.
There are plenty of them out there but the prob is free-yet-good-quality stuff is like a diamond in the sand. In an attempt to save time and effort on your side, we have done proper research and listed here 8 best places for free images that you should frequent. And by “best”, I mean “high quality photos in full resolution”. Now enjoy!
Disclaimer: we are not affiliated with ANY of the below providers!
1. Picjumbo
Picjumbo is the project created by Viktor Hanacek on Nov 2013, offering stock images for no cost at all. The library provides a wide range of photo categories and gets updated daily. You are free to use photos in both commercial and personal projects, which makes this no doubt the stomping ground for every template designer. Picjumbo provides premium membership as well, ensuring an inexhaustible source of unpublished images and complete collection history sent directly to your email.
2. Unsplash
This is one of my favourite. Similar to Picjumbo, Unsplash has a public domain license, no attribution required. 10 new photos are added every 10 days is stated clearly on the site. The website is neatly organized for better search and navigation. Crew studio, founder of Unplash is gathered with talented designers and makes sure you find what you need in just a few clicks.
3. Superfamous
This is a Los Angeles-based studio of Dutch designer Folkert Gorter. Unlike the two services above, photos on Superfamous require attribution under the conditions of a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. It means using images for commercial and personal purposes is both allowed as long as credit is provided. Well, this is just a small step on editing images, and it will not much a bother.
4. Gratisography
Photos in Gratisography collections are captured by Ryan Mcguire of Bells design with new images updated every week. Every item is available under the CC0 license without any copyright restrictions. Perfect for any commercial usage.
5. Death to the stock photo
Much like its name, Death To The Stock Photo attempts to go against any bland stock-like photo with its genuinely free lifestyle collections. Free registration is required for access to its library. New members get a free package after joining and new images update sent directly to their email every month. Previous photo packages are available to download as well. This is a cooperated project by Allie and David with minimal licensing restrictions.
6. Flickr
This site is way popular. Flickr has a range of copyrights, both commercial and non-commercial. Make sure you locate the right section for your specific purpose. For commercial usage, search in the Creative Commons-licensed content and browse under each license type until you find the appropriate content. Flickr’s terms are under Yahoo Terms of Service. Furthermore, if you find one good photo and want to use it, the best way is to contact the author directly for the Copyright permission.
7. 500px
Quite different from 6 services above, 500px is a broad market place to upload and sell photos between photographers and designers. No intermediary or entity account is allowed here. Free photos are listed under the Creative Commons section with various types of license as Attribution, Share Alike, Non-Commercial and No Derivative Works.
8. Public Domain Archive
You are a busy designer who find no time in getting updates from all those sites? Then Public Domain Archive is the right place to turn to. It serves as a public domain image repository, collecting awesome high resolution images from everywhere under CC0 1.0 Universal License. New images are added weekly. One place for all you need. What’s cooler than that?
A picture speaks a thousand words. Just give your photo the same treatment as your content and your beautiful projects would go far. Bookmark those for later use, shall we? Please do share by leaving comments below as if you have different cool sources.