25 Places for?FREE Stock Images
If you are using social media for your business you probably know you should be using images with your posts, right? This blog post from Hubspot claims content with relevant images get 94% more views than without, AND visual content is more than 40% more likely to get shared. They also mention Facebook posts with images see ?2.3x the engagement than posts without an image. Sounds like you need to incorporate images on your social media (if you haven't been already!).
Before you start using any of these sites, check out the licensing restrictions on the page which can usually be found in ?About Us.? ?According to Google, there are three types of usage rights when it comes to using free stock photos. Each site will inform you which photo fits which type. ?They are:
- ?Free to use or share: ?Allows you to copy or redistribute its content if the content remains unchanged.
- Free to use, share or modify: Allows you to copy, modify or redistribute in ways specified in the license.
- Commercially: ?If you want content for commercial use, be sure to select an option that includes the word commercially.?
Here you go!??25 awesome?sites where you can find free stock images.
- Dreamstime has 42 million images, will show similar photos to the one you are viewing, and has 15 categories with over 150 subcategories.
- Gratisography is a site created by Ryan McGuire which is full of gorgeous, hilarious photos. ?If you're looking for some humorous pictures for your website, look no further.
- Furious Camera allows you to search photos from 30+ stock sites including many of the sites in this article.
- Morguefile was created in 1996, has over 300,000 pictures and features a community board and art lessons.
- Free Photos Bank incorporates an advanced search where you can pick from categories, description, keywords, date, and look for the photos with the highest ratings.
- Public Domain Archive is a public image repository, a place to find inspiration, and contains gorgeous vintage photos.
- StockPhotos.io has illustrations, paintings and drawings, and photos containing inspirational quotes.
Kaboompics has photos for ?digital social media ninjas.?
- Pixabay contains 620,000 photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and videos.
- Bigfoto features photo categories separated by continents. ?Then you can search by the biggest cities or individual countries, depending on the location. ??
- Free Digital Photos aims to provide high quality images through a customer-focused site. They have small images that work best for online content. ?
- Rgbstock contains 100,000 photos with concepts like love, help, quality, and security. ?You can browse lightboxes or create your own, which usually includes photos with a theme.
- Unsplash contains photos with a unique perspective on the world, much of which is landscape or outdoor themed.
- ?Wikimedia Common features 31 million usable media files that anyone can contribute and the featured pictures are chosen by the community.
- ?Creative Commons allows you to search for photos and gives people the right to share, use and build upon others' work.
- Foter includes 228 million photos, has a system that can be used as a WordPress plugin, and you can easily embed the code for each picture and insert it into your blog.
- Canva lets you pick whether you use it for work, school or personal use and tailors your experience through your choice. It is a graphic design on the fly website but also includes a collection of graphics, with both free and cost options.
- Life of Pix offers point-of-view photos and vimeo videos. ?The central theme seems to be the awe of nature and the power of architecture. ?
- Travel Coffee Book lets you take a trip around the world with by viewing its high quality images.
- PicJumbo has a blog with top photos in a certain category, which can be as quirky as ?Fresh Bananas/Pineapple in Female Hands.?
- ISO Republic is made up of colorful and unusual images.
- Jay Mantri created a site featuring his pictures that use unique lighting and possess small details that pop from the page.
- Magdeleine lets you turn the ?lights? on and off for the background of the site, which really sets the day and night videos in perspective. ?
- IM Free has some unique categories like ambient, inspiration, and lifestyles and takes you straight to flickr to use your pictures.
- ?Free Range Stock uses in house and contributor photos. Thousands don't make the cut, which mean they have incredibly high quality photos.
Licensing is a big deal, so don?t ignore it – give credit where you can and keep track of where you picked up your images in case anyone questions you. One way of doing this could be to rename the image using the name of the website you collected it from. There are steep fines for copyright infringement so be careful out there, but have fun browsing all these visual tools that can be incorporated into your branding, marketing and social media.
Do you have a favorite free stock photo site? We always enjoying checking out new options for FREE stock photos. Let us know your favs!
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