Here on the Buffer blog, we think a lot about visual content.
We’ve shared our own study on the importance of images in Twitter posts for more social sharing. We’ve explored tools that help anyone create visual content.
But there’s one question we get asked quite often: Where can you find free, good quality images that are cleared to use for your blog posts or social media content?
It’s a question with a lot of different answers and caveats. Nearly every image created in the last 30 years is still protected by copyright—a protection that gives virtually every author the exclusive right to use or reproduce their work. But you can find a public domain photo, use a Creative Commons image that might need attribution or even create your own image from scratch.
We’ll explore all of these and then some in this post about free image sources. A few things to know before we get started:
What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.
There are various types of Creative Commons licenses that range from allowing any type of use with no attribution to allowing only certain uses and no changes.
What is public domain?
Works in the public domain are those whose copyrights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable. Finding something on the internet does not mean it is in the public domain.
These terms will come up often as we discuss free photo sources. Read over the terms and conditions of each site you try so you know exactly when and what type of attribution is required.
In this post, we’ll break down more than 50 different sources and tools for visual content. We’ll cover the following (click on any section to be taken to that area directly):
Searchable photo sites
Free-form photo libraries
Photo search tools
Create-your-own image tools
Embeddable media
(One final note: Anywhere there’s a representative photo that accompanies a tool or site, I’ve tried to leave it at the size it downloaded to give you an idea of what you’ll be getting—click once to get a better look at any photo.)
Searchable photo databases
If you want a photo or image on a specific topic, you’ll want a site that’s searchable. Here are a few to check out. (To better help you evaluate these sites, I performed the same search on each using the word “coffee.”)
1.) Dreamstime
Dreamstime offers a free section that’s searchable and frequently updated. It requires you to create a (free) account.
2.) Free Digital Photos
Free Digital Photos houses a wealth of free images—categorized and searchable—for business, personal or educational use. They’re smaller sized, and larger versions are available to purchase. Using the free images often requires a credit to the photographer and the site like the one you see below.
Image Credit: khunaspix via FreeDigitalPhotos.net
3.) Free Images
Free Images is a large gallery of more than 350,000 stock photos, searchable and categorized. Downloading a photo does require a longer-than-most signup process but the bigger selection might be worth it.
4.) Free Range Stock
Free Range Stock offers access to free high-quality, high-resolution stock photos. A (free) registration is required.
5.) Free Photos Bank
Free Photos Bank has a nice collection of free photos available for download without login. They’re extensively categorized with a few different ways to search, too.
6.) ImageFree
ImageFree‘s registered users can download both free and paid images to use in corporate and personal projects. The free selection seems fairly limited, though—my “coffee” search didn’t turn up a free photo I could use.
7.) IM Free
IM Free offers a curated collection of free resources, all for commercial use. Search for a keyword or browse through the stylishly crafted categories.
8.) Morguefile
Morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site. A short registration is required, and morguefile asks that users credit the photographer when possible.
9.) Pixabay
Pixabay offers copyright-free, cost-free images published under Creative Commons. You can copy, modify, distribute and use the images, even for commercial purposes. No registration is required.
10.) Public Domain Pictures
Public Domain Pictures is a repository for a wide variety of free public domainimages uploaded by amateur photographers. A brief signup is required. (Premium download is an option if you need larger images.)
11.) Stockvault
Stockvault is a stock photo sharing website where photographers, designers and students can share their photographs, graphics and image files with each other for free and use them for personal and non-commercial design work. No registration is required.
12.) Rgbstock
Rgbstock is a free stock image site created by photographers and graphic artists. Registration (required) is one-click and the pool of photos is pretty deep.
Free-form photo collections
“Bloggers often look for specificity with the images they use on posts when they could see similar results from simply choosing high-quality photos,” says David Sherry of Death to The Stock Photo.
His service and others in this category offer a more freewheeling approach to images—no searching but lots of discovery.
Since there’s no search in this category, I’ve picked a representative image for each service.
13.) Ancestry Images
Ancestry Images offers a free image archive of historical prints, maps and artifact photos, like this print of a New Zealand Maori Warrior from 1817.
14.) BigFoto
BigFoto is a royalty-free photo gallery in which most of the photos have been contributed by amateur photographers. No login is required. It’s organized mainly by geographic area—for example, this photo is from the “Copenhagen” collection.
15.) Gratisography
Gratisography is a collection of free high-resolution images for personal or commercial use. New photos are added weekly; simply click to download.
16.) Death to The Stock Photo
Death to The Stock Photo offers free high-res lifestyle photography sent to you monthly.
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