10 Best Sites for Getting Free Images for your Website
By now everyone knows that the content that is visually presented or is supported by images always has a better impact on its audience. We, the human beings, are known to absorb information better when it is displayed through pictures and graphics. However, finding good quality images on the internet can be a tedious task, and more often than not you would end up with crappy stock photos of people in suits shaking hands, or those which are in low resolution, watermarked or are blurry. While most of the images that you would find are pretty tacky, the other lot costs some precious amount of money.
A few high-quality pictures can change the face of your website or blog completely, but getting a hold of these good photos is a ridiculous hassle. Thankfully, in recent years there have been several websites that offer some beautiful and relevant stock photography without much of a hassle, and more importantly at no significant cost. (PS: There will always be some terms and conditions which you must read through before using those images)
So before jumping to the edge of your seat to ask where can you find these free and good quality photos, here are 10 best sites where you can get them.
Dreamstime
All you need to do is create a free account on Dreamstime and it will offer you a section full of free stock images. These images are searchable and also are frequently updated. All that you would need to do is add a credit line next to the photo.
Pixabay
No registration, no attribution, and completely cost-free images are available on Pixabay which currently has more than 790,000 free stock photos. It is one of the favorite websites amongst the web designers because of its easy to use, search feature. You can copy or modify the image, and also use it in digital or printed form even if it is for commercial purposes.
Creative Commons Search
Creative Commons Search (ccSearch), you can say is a kind of photo search engine which searches multiple websites simultaneously such as Pixabay, Flickr, and Google. So you must enter your search query and then choose the platforms on which you want to search for it. However, you must check the licensing terms and if any attribution is needed on the search results that you get from ccSearch .
Unsplash
This is another popular site to get a collection of free high-resolution photos. It offers 10 free good quality photos every 10 days and you can do whatever you want with them. You can simply subscribe to receive these 10 new images straight in your inbox every 10 days or you can also search the inventory if that is more convenient. These images are submitted and published under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, thus giving you provision to use the image for personal as well as commercial use without requiring any sort of attribution .
Morguefile
What most of the users like about this site is its excellent search tool which allows you to add a filter according to categories, size, color, rating and other factors. Although the collection of photos is limited, they include a wide range of topics and you can find everything from abstract to animals here. You just need to start off with registration and would also require crediting the photographer when possible.
Gratisography
This site is a collection of incredible high –resolution images which are offered for free, whether you use it for personal or commercial use. New pictures are added every week and all of them are taken by the talented Ryan McGuire, who is an artist and a web designer. All images are free and there are no copyright restrictions, which means you don’t need to give any sort of attribution.
Pexels
This is one of the newer websites and yet is very popular amongst it users. Pexels keeps adding 10 new high-quality images every day to its collection of free stock photos. The Pexel team is known to pick all the images from other free image sources and allows complete unrestricted usage of them. You can copy, modify and distribute the image irrespective of whether it is for personal use or commercial.
Flickr
Flickr has been one of the biggest photo sharing websites and is a reliable source of free images. This site will open a wide range of photographs from the world’s best and so your search won’t be complete unless you look up here. The important thing to note here is that every photo will have Creative Commons license which will tell you how can you use the image. There are eight different license categories and hence every image cannot be used for free. The images that you find in the Free Use Photos section can be used by anyone without requiring any sort of attribution. Just make sure to check what you can or cannot do with a particular image before you decide to use it.
Negative Space
This is another great site that releases 20 new images every week that are free to use as they are released under Creative Commons (CC0). So you don’t need to take any permission for copying, modifying, or distributing it for personal or commercial use. You can use their search function for finding images and can further sort them as per the category, copy space and color.
StockSnap
This one too like many others offers images that are free from copyright restrictions and would not require any sort of attribution. Several new images are added every week and you can view them as per the date they have been uploaded. You can also check which are the images that are trending and what number of views have they received. Similar to Unsplash and Negative Space, StockSnap releases images under Creative Commons (CC0) license, thus enabling you to use the image as you wish.
So, these are some of my favorites and I am sure you would find plenty more websites that offer free photographs. So use them prudently and even if they are free, it is a good gesture to credit the photographer because it was his/her effort that has resulted in that best captured moment.
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