Regardless of how good your website was designed, you should display it in a professional, clean and the most natural way. Symbolism, which is achieved by imagery is the most powerful element used in any design form. Imagery creates an emotional connection between you and your website visitors so remember paying attention to the images used to represent your site or brand.
As a designer, I cannot tolerate plain and ordinary photos, poor quality pictures or amateur level images used on any website. A few years ago, many people became tired of finding lovely images only to realize they are only available for sale. But recently, times have changed with plenty of royalty free images all over the Internet.
Some key reasons why you should consider using free stock photographs rather than the ones you find anywhere on the web:
- Stock photographs keep you away from lawsuits
- They help to connect with your site’s visitors
- Increase the probability of your website being shared on social media
- They shape the brand image in a better way
I have made a collection of several sites that offer free photos that you can download and use. Hopefully, they will assist you with spicing up your websites main page design. Also, remember to carefully go through the licenses because some of these websites and free images need proper credits.
Pixabay
Right now, Pixabay is the primary site I visit when I need to download free royalty images. With more than 450,000 pictures to choose from, there is a high probability that this site’s collection will fulfill your needs. With no hidden and confusing image rights, Pixabay images can be used without any attribution in both printed and digital forms which also includes commercial and personal use.
Unsplash
Unsplash is an excellent place where you can get very artistic images for use on your websites, blogs, and other digital projects. You can choose to go through their inventory or subscribe to get picture alerts of up to new photos after every ten days, which is straightly delivered to your inbox. All images submitted and published on this platform fall under the CCO license, which implies that the images can be for both personal and commercial purposes. One is allowed to download, change and share the images without giving any credits to the site owners or the photographers. -But it’s every time good to give credit where it’s need to give.
StockMile
All images from this website are copyright free, and they don’t need credits. Thousands of new images are added on a weekly basis, and you can choose to sort them by date or by the number of views they receive. There’s also a section for trending photos, which gives you the privilege of accessing the most popular photos on the website. Just like Unsplash, StockMile.com is not different when it comes to licensing; You’re free to use the stock images as you wish. The driving force behind the founders of this website was to build a huge community of free photography with stock photographers that love to share what they have done with the world.
Flickr
Since it was founded, Flickr has been the most reliable source of free images up to date. With Flickr, it’s always important to have knowledge of the standard license that comes with each selected image. Flickr has up to eight different image license categories each category has its regulations. But the images available in the free Use photos field are open for use by any individual and no credits are needed to the creator.
Pexels
Pexels offers ten new high-quality images to its assortment of free stock photographs every day, which presently rests at more than 3000. With at least 100 new images added weekly, the Pexels catalog should increase by about 4000 copies every year.The Pexels team picks all the pictures from other free image resources, including earlier mentioned Unsplash. Every photography is high quality and comes under the Creative Commons No certificate, allowing unrestricted use.
Fatality to the Stock Photo
With a memorable name, Fatality to the Stock Photography is one of the very most popular free image resources. It offers two options: a free of charge plan that provides a fresh load up of images to your inbox each month and a paid version that, for $15 monthly, offers you full usage of the whole collection of stock pictures and a premium-only bundle of images on a monthly basis.
Snap wire Snaps
Snap wire Snaps is another option that offers free images to your inbox, increasing your source a week with seven new photos. If you’re a Tumblr individual, you can follow Snap wire Snaps rather than miss the latest photos.
With just a little over the year’s well worth of images, this is not the primary online data source of free stock images, but it’s one worth increasing your bookmarks. They are some of the greater creative images you will see free of charge and mounted on an innovative Commons Zero permit.
Superfamous
Super famous has plenty of free stock images that can be downloaded in high resolution. The good thing about this website is images are categorically placed in collections and pictures can be used as per persons wish as long as credits are provided.
IM Creator Free
IM Creator free is just but a new IM Creator feature. It’s comprised of free resources that can be used for commercial purposes. Make sure you go through the license before using any image because some of them need credits to the owners.
New Old Stock
Cole Townsend created this website with a motive of publishing old and free retro photos commonly found in public Achieves known to be free of copyright restrictions. So in case you need retro photos for your project, you know where to find them.
