Top Five Websites for Free Images

One of the most asked questions I get when I’m training or doing a seminar, is “where do I find images for my website?” There are many online options for finding images- some free, some subscription based, some pay per download. Here are the more common free options that I’ve come across.

FLickr

Flickr is the biggest photo sharing site on the web. I use Flickr a lot. You need to be aware of the common licensing agreement. Some images can be manipulated, others cannot. And, if you read the fine print, you need to cite the source of the image. For an example, see the image above. From the home page, select Explore. On the next page, select Creative Commons under the Explore menu option. The first two groups, Attrribution License and Attribution-No Derivs, are where I search for images. The other groups are for non-commercial use.

Stock.xchng

This site has nearly 400,000 images covering every topic. It is one of the largest collections available. As they claim on their site, they are the leading Free stock photo site. I highly recommend them. Their images are high quality and their standard licensing agreement states you can use their images in digital format and in printed material.

Free Digital Photos

Download free and premium stock photos and illustrations for websites, advertising materials, newspapers, magazines, ebooks, book covers and pages, music artwork, software applications and much more. Every image is free, with an option to buy larger images at reasonable prices.

StockPhotosForFree

At Stock Photos for Free, you can download over 100,000 completely free images. Their photos cover every topic from exotic locales to talent-released people and everything in between. Their images tend to be more abstract than some other sites. There are never any fees to download their photos, and they can be used in all types of media.

 

Dreamstime

Dreamstime has a wide variety of images. Although their free images are limited to 66,000(!), you can usually find an image that works well. Their entire collection is over 13,000,000 images. All stock images available are provided by Dreamstime community’s photographers – with more than 130,000 contributing photographers.