Today we’re having a look at the best places on the web today to download free stock photos that you can use either for personal or commercial use.
If you are focusing on building a website or commercial enterprise you want to use stock photography for your website that represents the image you have in mind. However, many people seem to settle for cheesy stock imagery. I’m not sure whether this is because they don’t have an image in mind for their brand, or because they can’t tell a bad stock photo from a good one.
Stock photography that is high quality, doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, if you know where to look there are great resources out there for free and high quality stock photography.
Negative Space
On this website you’ll see excellent free stock photos uploaded every week. The photos are all copyright free meaning you can use them however you want. The images and photos tend to be stylish.
The pictures range from technology to architecture. This is a website I find myself coming back to again and again.
Its really simple to filter the gallery of photos to find the image you are looking for. Sort by category, copy space position and color.
Death to the stock photo
David and Allie, the founders and principal photographers for “death to the stock photo” have set out to make life easier for bloggers and businesses to find the high quality images the want for their project.
Submit your email to them and receive a cool batch of stock photos from them every month.
They also have a premium option for $15 a month.
Stokpic
Stockpic is another personal project. Photographer Ed Gregory generously shares 10 new photos every fortnight that you can use for free. Browse through categories like technology, landscape and people. Also check out his latest 100 pictures for inspiration.
PicJumbo
New high quality photos are added to PicJumbo on the daily. You’ll find a wide range of excellent imagery to fit a variety of topics. And you can rest assured that it’s all copyright free. PicJumbo is one of my go to sites to download free stock photos.
The photographer behind it Viktor, has some paid packages available starting at $10 per month.
LibreShot
This guy Martin Vorel is offering hundreds of excellent high quality free stock images on his website LibreShot. You can use these photos for personal use or commercial use. They are protected under the CCO 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, so can be used by anyone. He guarantees their origin, because he took all the photos himself!
This is a great resource to download free stock photos, and we commend Martin for his excellent work!
Startup Stock Photos
The owners of this website have said in the past “
While they are aiming their service squarely at star-ups, there is no reason why any professional or amateur might not use what they have on offer.
This is certainly one of the best places on the web to download free stock photos.
SiteBuilderReport
This is an excellent resource that allows you to download free stock photos. The Stock Up aggregator takes photos from dozens of free photo sources. This has allowed them to create one of the largest databases of free stock photos in the internet. Currently they have almost 15, 000 photos available for you to use, compared to most websites which have around 1000.
They have been used by and endorsed by Forbes and The Huffington Post in the past.
There is an excellent search function here, that allows you to plug in a description of what you are looking for. The results are usually pretty decent.
This website was a fantastic discovery for me, and I encourage you guys to check it out too.
Kaboompics
This website is a project by Karolina, a web designer from Poland. She is the creative source behind all these excellent free high-quality photos.
She does ask that you include her photo credit where possible. This will help her to grow her site, and in turn will help provide more lovely photos in future.
Beyond that there are no other formal attribution requirements or copyright stipulations.
EveryStockPhoto
EveryStockPhoto have created a useful search engine on their website that returns free stock photo results from around the web for you to use. This is an essential tool for website and app builders that want to ensure the imagery on their website is legit. Free photos will be found listed under public domain, creative commons and other free licenses. Enjoy!
Picfinder
This is another useful search engine that scours the web looking for stock photos that are completely free to use for commercial and personal use.
An alternative to copyright has emerged, sometimes called “copyleft”. This includes the likes of creative commons and GNU.
Picfinder uses such photos allowing you to find and download free stock photos.
FreePixels
Search their archives or browse through the categories to find and download free stock photos and images with FreePixels.
Cepolina
Cepolina has more than 20,000 free photos from around the world that you can use for commercial or personal projects without paying a penny. You can use these images as you like without being at risk of breaking copyright law.
They have categorized these photos extensively, with over 1400 tags being used. That makes the site easy to search and useful for getting the image you are after.
The photos can be downloaded in six different formats up to 1600x 1200 pixels.
Verdict
If you are running a commercial enterprise, you’ve got to take some care with the images and photographs you are using.
However, there are many excellent websites where you can download very high quality stock photos that are free from copyright.
Just because you are going for free, doesn’t mean you need to compromise on quality at all.
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