5 Great Websites for Free Stock Photos
If you want to make your website look good, then you will need great photos as well as a good layout and interesting content to go along with it. However, you may not have lots of photos that you can use and so you will need to look for them. You cannot just use any photo you find though as there will be copyrights on them and you may have to pay for them. It is not good to just take any image you like the look of and use it, this in uncourteous and in some case illegal and it could cause you big problems. You do not want to be known for stealing photos! Most people cannot afford to buy photographs though and so it is good to find free ones. However, it is not always easy to find them, which is why we have come up with a list.
The site has over one million files and they are all available for free download. Most are high definition and suitable for professional us as well. Although anyone can submit photos they are all manually vetted before they are included which mean that the quality is better as a result. The license agreement allows commercial use for photos digitally and for print use and there is no attribution required but there are not allowed to be redistributed or altered and then sold. The website is easy to use as well and there are even community features such as a blog.
Pexels has hundreds of thousands of royalty-free photos which are all high resolution. They have been submitted by artists or added from other free photo sites. There is a big selection of different pictures and the photos are all free to download or use. They can be used for commercial purposes with no attribution required. The fact that they accept photos from other free photo sites does mean there could be a risk that using some of the pictures could infringe copyright. However, the pictures are really good and the site is neat and professional.
This is a site that has a lot of high-quality photos which are split into popular topics. There are hundreds of thousands of free images and they come from different contributors so will vary in style from artistic to commercially styled images. All of the contributors are known stock media producers which means that the quality should be good. The license enables the use of the photos in commercial projects but they cannot be resold or used on products that will be resold. It is possible to edit the pictures using their DesignWizard tool.
This site has around a thousand pictures which is professional styles and artistic and they are all from the archive of the owner Daniel Nanesou who is the photographer behind the site. There are lots of different themes covered and the pictures can be downloaded and used free of charge. The images cannot be resold but they can be altered and used for reselling purposes. They are very trendy and would look good for use on many different projects such as websites, adverts, blogs etc. Although the amount of photos is quite small compared to other sites, they are great quality pictures.
This site has a collection of modern photos which are all artsy and youthful in their style so great for on-trend uses. The site is also very cool and easy to use. The site has a custom license and the photos can be used for free in commercial projects and no attribution is required but images cannot be compiled. There are half a million photos from contributing artists and each gets their own portfolio page. This does mean that images are crowdsourced and not manually checked so there could potentially be quality issues. However, the photographers will probably be using it as a way to show off their talents in the hope they will get work on the back of it and so they are unlikely to submit poor pictures.
These are just a few of the sites that are available. It is really good to have a look yourself and see which you think will have pictures that will suit you and portray you with the style that you are looking for. It is wise to always be really careful about the copyright and use agreement and that you only use pictures that you are sure are free to use and copyright-free as well as suitable for commercial use.