Images are like coffee to website owners and bloggers on a winter morning. Free images are like free coffee; they can be great and at times do not hit the spot. When you are starting off with a blog, you would definitely be wanting to keep costs low and one area where most do not splash for is images.
Every blog that talks about blogging has at least one post that shows you where to find free images. The irony is none of them have a visual guide. So we went ahead and created a visual guide to finding free images online.
Hopefully, this is the only page you would need to bookmark for your free image quest. By the way, you can use any of our Infographics on your site free of cost we just need a link for our hard work. Here are 28 sources for free images.
If you like it, share it.
1. Pexels – Has made things easy by using Creative Commons Zero (CC0). This allows you to use any image from them without the need for credit or links for personal and commercial use.
2. Wikimedia Commons – Collection of over 26 million image files. They are growing every day as anyone can contribute to their gallery.
3. GettyImages – 50 million images that are embeddable. You have to search for an image and copy the code to embed the image.
4. Public Domain Archive – Publish images weekly, they have both modern and vintage images. Public Domain archive is a collection of free images around the web curated by bloggers.
5. Free Images – I used their images at the start. Their free images are not that eye catching but they do have a paid image option as well.
6. Open Photo – Open Photo offers curated open source photos under the creative commons license. You can find great nature pictures here.
7. New Old Stock – Exactly as the name says, vintage pictures. All pictures can be used for personal and non-commercial use. Pictures in pro photo pack can be used commercially.
8. Picography – Awesome hi-resolution pictures available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
9. Creative Market – Is a paid service but with free weekly goodies like images, fonts and themes.
10. Stokpic – Great collection of quality, free pictures for both personal and commercial use. You can easily search using the categories of the images. They also have vector files and videos.
11. Foodies Feed – 230,000+ free hi-resolution food images.
12. Stockvault – 55K modern and colourful images; they are not all free so do check.
13. Unsplash – Free hi-resolution images that are colourful and vibrant. Unsplash has plenty of nature and global iconic location pictures for example, the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge. They do not have a search function and it is hard find the image you want but they display the free images in a grid.
14. Photopin – Searches Flikr creative common images and provides proper attribution links.
15. A Prettier Web – Provides free feminine images and themes.
16. Picjumbo – 1.7 million downloads in about 18 months speaks volumes of their collection which is easy to navigate using categories and tags.
17. SplitShire – Categorised from abstract to weddings and an option to download 500 images in bulk is a handy feature. No attribution required and you can use the images how you want for personal and commercial use.
18. Death to the Stock Photo – You can get access to the complete library for $15 per month or get free image packs emailed to you monthly.
19. Gratisography – If you are looking for something funny, quirky or outside the norm then there is a good chance you will find those types of images here.
20. Morguefile – Free hi-res images, some have no restrictions and some need permission and a link back to the creator. You can find some quirky images here as well.
21. Dreamstime – Known for their paid collection of images. They also have a free images tab which is handy. Do check out their free logos and banners.
22. Pixabay – Great collection of over 400K pictures and vector files for designers available free of cost.
23. FreeFoto – 130K images with 3.6K categories; they can be used with attribution and a link back.
24. iStock – Free weekly images, with audio, video, cartoon or animated image files.
25. Boss Fight – Great Pics with no strings attached. The objective of this site is to be the boss of free stock images in one location.
26. Flickr Creative Commons – Flikr has some of the most creative and vibrant pics. Some are free to use without any attribution and some require proper mention so do check the licensing requirement.
27. Stock Snap – Royalty free hi-res pics without attribution provided under CC0.
28. Google Images – Everyone knows about Google Images but they are not all free to use. If you click on ‘Search Tools’ under Google images then you can select a ‘usage right’ that suits your need. Google Images is a bit of a hit and miss but you never know when it can be handy.
Conclusion
Engaging images will hang onto the reader’s attention. Why? The human brain processes pictures faster than plain text; that’s why Infographics are considered cool and popular. I am sure you are aware of the saying “a picture speaks a thousand words?” Pictures are shared more often in Facebook and Twitter compared to plain text content. Pinterest is the fastest growing website on earth and is completely devoted to visual content, surely that means something.
Consumers have a lot of choices these days so don’t think you can get away with plain text content like in the 90’s.
Use the resources for free images wisely. One may be better than the other; one may have better images for a particular niche. Always check the licencing requirements and give credit where it is due. Including engaging images within your content is a must for readability, comprehension, user experience, social sharing, Pinterest shares, storytelling and much more. Let’s create a visual web together.
Reference – ProBlogger.net
It is very important to upload some image to our articles.Very useful content.Thanks for sharing bro.
You are welcome and thanks for sharing your thought. Cheers, Cent
What a great Content, really love this, I wanna re share it to my friends if you allow. Thanks for sharing
Hi Ranap, glad to hear you liked the content. No need to ask for sharing. After all sharing is caring right? Thanks for that. Cheers, Cent
it’s really important to put SEO into our article, it can help us get more reader..
thank you for this useful post, i’d like to bookmark it
Hi Rumah, great to hear you liked the article. When I hear people bookmark or share, its like music to my ears. Thanks, Cent
Hi Cent,
Another great infographic.
A picture is not only important for SEO purpose, but also a good quality picture can significant boost your manual traffic through sharing. I really struggle sometimes to get my preferred image. But this list is definitely gonna come as handy while writing my next post.
Thanks for sharing these free image sources.
Hi Manidipa, great to hear the list of free image sources are handy and thanks for the comment. Cheers, Cent
Really love the content and the infographic. Thank you for sharing
Hi Chris, you are welcome. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. Cheers, Cent
WOW, so many different sources for free images, all in one infographic. I wasn’t aware of some of these sites. You have made my job easy. Images are very important in blogging,so really greatful for sharing this content with everyone.
Hi Roma, awesome to hear you found the list of sites useful. As you said, hopefully it makes everyone’s job a little easier. Cheers, Cent
Love the images you have selected in the infographic, its not just eye catching but a delight too.
Hi Ashton, great to hear the images did their job. Appreciate your comment. Cheers, Cent
This kind of websites will be very useful for designers. Thanks for sharing.
Very good point. Thanks for pointing that out. Cheers, Cent
Way to catch out attention by talking about coffee in the beginning. (Chuckle)
Your infographic is a helpful list to have. I took you suggestion to bookmark this page
Hi James, awesome to hear the coffee trick worked 🙂 and you are a champ for bookmarking the site. Thanks, Cent
Hey Cent,
thank you for the infographic, love your presentation.
I remember to have stumbled upon the problogger post some time back – while the information was top-notch, the presentation couldn’t have beaten your infographic,
Personally, I like to use flickr commons – they already have so many images that one really don’t need to use any other service. Google images on the other hand is a bit too risky and seems more like inviting trouble!
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Hi Uttoran Sen,
I Couldn’t agree with you more about Flikr & Google images. Great to hear you loved the presentation and your comment is much appreciated.
Thanks, Cent
love the inforgraphics on your site and the content as well, 28 different sites to select free pics from, thank you
Hi Mirza, great to hear you like the infographics. Thanks for the comment. Cheers, Cent
i have been using Unsplash quite a bit – thanks to you i have a few more websites i can go to now.
Hi Emma, great to hear. Unsplash has been pretty good for me so far as well. Thanks, Cent
wow, thank you for your content, now i can get free pict with 28 website. your blog is really help me . .
Hi Judi, glad to hear the post with free images was useful. Thanks for the comment. Cheers, Cent
woowww.
what a nice list cent..
thank you for this,, i’ll try it..
Great to hear you liked the list. Yes do give it a go. I found the sites with quirky images to be quite interesting. Thanks for the comment. Cheers, Cent
Most of the bloggers and image wanting stoop use google image, Pinterest and hardly go on the rest. This is a great blog and I have now many resources to find a suitable image. thanks for sharing this useful knowledge.
Hi Pushpendra, awesome to hear the image sources were useful. Thanks for the comment. Cheers, Cent
Wowza! This is a great, and a HUGE roundup. Thanks so much for throwing us a mention 🙂
Absolutely any time. Great to hear you liked the round-up. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. Cheers, Cent
Hi Cent,i love the way you have handpicked 28 different sources and combined them under one infograph.I have bookmarked this post and will be referring to it all the time.
Hi Reza, awesome to hear you have bookmarked the site. Glad you like the 28 image sources. Thanks for the comment. Cheers, Cent
Hey thanks for the list. You make my work easy. Now i will get any image i want for my website. Thanks for the post.
Hi Swapnil, welcome back to the site. Glad you found the image sources useful. Appreciate your comment. Cheers, Cent
Hey Cent,
Thanks for sharing these resources bro.
We know the importance of visuals in content marketing.
This should help many of your readers 😉
Hi Enstine,
Your comment is much appreciated and you are spot on about visuals being key to content marketing.
Cheers, Cent