When you are a freelance designer, you need to strive on free stuff. Not always, but the Internet is a huge place. You can practically find anything on it, for free. So it’s always better to get it for free than to buy it, as long as its legal. So to help all those designers and web designers out there, here are 10 of the best sites available that will get you free stock photos. Go and have a look, and happy hunting.
1. Stock.XCHING :
This is one of the greatest Free and Premium stock photo provider out there. The site hosts to about 400,000 free stock pictures for you to take. There is a huge variety available for you so you can probably find the best Stock photos for your needs. The site has 3 types of stocks; one that are totally free and require no permission to download, the other requires a permission from the author to use, even though it is free but under copyright laws. The 3rd type is a premium type, but we will not go into that as this is a free stock website list!.
2. Getty Images:
One of the BEST out there, in my opinion this is the best stock photo site out there. Not only has the site have an international reputation, but also serves a huge collection of free stock photo collection. Besides that, the site has a clean and user-friendly theme which is very helpful. The site also has a premium section like Stock.XCHING.
3. JupiterImages:
This is a search engine for stock photos, and also provides a list of websites that actually host free stock pictures. A good alternative, if you cannot find your image on the other 9 sites.
4. StockVault:
The site like Getty Images, has a great theme which is user friendly. The site was established in around 2001, after which it went through several changes and introduced many amazing features to photographers such as the ability for them to submit photographs, and for users like the ability to use a Lightbox, etc. As of now, the site hosts a collection of 18206 royalty-free photos.
5. Fotolia:
As the sites “About Us” says: “Fotolia offers the largest image bank of free and affordable royalty free photos and illustrations perfect for any medium, web or print.”. As of currently, the site has a collection of 8,891,541 images.
6. Morgue File:
The site has a collection of photographs that are contributed by photographers all around the world, for use in creative projects. The site only asks the web designer/developer to credit the author, to whom the stock photo belongs to.
7. EveryStock Photo:
Just like Jupiter Image, EveryStock Photo is a search engine for royalty-free stock photos. The site currently indexes about 3 million photos. You can specify your needs according to your project in the Search options.
8. Image Base:
The site has a huge collection of free stock photos. They all are licensed under the Creative Commons license. Images are available in the resolutions of (1600 x 1200 or 3072×2048) format.
9. Free Pixels:
It has a moderate collection of free stock photos. Not something very special, but does the job sometimes. The only good thing about is, that the site has a great search engine and finding images is made really easy.
10. Image After:
The site has a collection of 2484 free textures and free photos. You can use the images not only for personal, but for commercial use also. The site has quite a small collection of free stock photos, but the ones that it does have, are really good quality.
A special, like ALWAYS:
11. Historic Stocks:
The site has the best historic stock photos, from the Uncle SAM wants you to the Bombing of Pearl Harbor. The site hosts one of the best and greatest historic stock free collection on the Internet. The site is a must go, if you want to see some really amazing pictures.
Getty images “also serves a huge collection of free stock photo collection”
does it?
Fotolia are the largest free image bank with 8 million odd images?
I don’t think so!
theres a huge chasm of difference between “free stock photos” and “royalty free stock photos”
Sir, the only difference comes in price and the way you are allowed to use the image. The royalty free photo’s price is based on your output requirement and you may use it multiple times for multiple projects keeping in according if there is any Model required to it or not.
Stocks are just stocks. while some have rights manged others do not. Some require you to use them only once and also some forbid you from using them for commercial ones.
But overall, there is not much of a difference, sir. If you just keep out from the depths of those details, there’s not much difference. Keeping it simple: they both are free.
Great list dude.
Thank You.