Free stock images and where to find them.

Have you found yourself needing to use a stock image for something and you have no idea where to get one without paying a huge amount of money or subscribing to a package?

I used to find myself in this position on a weekly basis. I would need an image and not know where to get it. This was usually for a blog article, a quick social media post, or in the next email being scheduled.

This led me to build this list of places where you can find your next great stock image.

Option #1 — Pexels

All of the great photos on Pexels can be used for free for noncommercial or even commercial use. Attribution is not required but of course the photographer would never say no to you giving them credit for their work.. You can freely modify the photos as needed.

Option #2 — Unsplash

Similar to Pexels, Unsplash grants you an irrevocable, non exclusive, worldwide copyright license to download, copy, modify, distribute, perform, and use photos from Unsplash for free, including for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the photographer or Unsplash. This is great because you know that the rights to that photo aren’t going to change.

Option #3 — Gratisography

This site boasts about being the world’s quirkiest collection of high-resolution free stock images, comprised of the world’s best, most creative pictures — images you just won’t find anywhere else. There are definitely some amazing photos on this site that you don’t want to miss. Like the previous options the license is free for non commercial and commercial use.

Option #4 — Negative Space

Negative Space is building a community of photographers who want to share their work with the world. Because they want to give people easy access to beautiful, high-resolution photography, all of the photos on their site are free. Free in cost as well as free to use under a Creative Commons CC0 license.

Option #5 — Picography

This site is the same as the ones above. It has its own unique selection of images and it offers them to you under a free for commercial and non commercial use license.

Option #6 — Picjumbo

This is one of the more popular options. They boast to have the largest selection of free commercial and non commercial use images in their stock image library. They also boast to have more than 6 million images downloaded from their site.

In reality these six sites above all offer the same service. They give you beautiful images at the great low price of free and a ton of freedom with the licence.

So, why do you need to know about all the stock image sites?

The biggest benefit to knowing about multiple sites is the ability to find the perfect image. None of these location have the exact same images on them. They each have their own unique library set up so that you, the consumer, can find the perfect image.

I hope that you find the exact image that you were looking for.

Originally published at webscientists.net on October 4, 2018.