In this Video, we’ll show you how to find quality free stock photos to use on your website,
blog, or social media accounts.
We’ll share with you our pick of the Best free stock photo sites for 2017 and 2018,
as well as the best paid stock image sites, and briefly explain Creative Commons licensing.
Some of the sites we’ll share with you include unsplash, pexels, Kaboompics, and foodie’s
feed - just to name a few.
We have 28 of the best free stock photo sites, so stay tuned to learn more.
We’ve created a blog post that you can follow along with on the OHKLYN blog at OHKLYN o-h-k-l-y-n.com/blog
- we’ll add a direct link in the description below.
The full list, and all the links will be included in the OHKLYN article for your reference,
so I would recommend opening the article in a new tab, so you can follow along as we go
through.
Alright, let’s get to it.
Firstly, we’ll briefly cover the Creative Commons Licences.
Creative commons is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to provide anyone who creates
content with an easy, standardized, and accessible way to license and grant permissions to their
creative property.
Instead of everything being flagged under one all encompassing copyright law, it allows
creators to specify the extent to which their creations can be used and distributed.
The main distinction between the types of licences are if there’s restrictions on
the use of the image, or if the use of the image is unrestricted.
Unrestricted use is denoted by the CC0 licence.
We’ll dedicate the first two sections of this video to the stock photo sites with unrestricted
use, meaning you can use the images on these site however you like, for personal or commercial
use.
To make life easier, we’ve grouped the best stock photo sites into four categories, which
are:
Free stock photo sites for commercial use without attribution – denoted by the Creative
Commons 0 licence or CC0 Free niche stock photo websites for the travel,
food, startups, nature, and feminine niches (also on a CC0 license)
Free stock image sites with various Creative Commons Licenses (including both restricted
and unrestricted licences), and The Best paid stock photo sites
Up first is the best free stock images for personal or commercial use, which means you
can use these images, or remix and edit these images with no attribution required:
One of our favourites is Unsplash From the onset you can see that Unsplash is
filled with beautiful and high-quality images, in fact, more than 200,000!
It makes it almost hard to believe how generous their licensing terms are.
They just ask to credit the site and author out of appreciation, and give you the option
to make a contribution.
Both of which are optional, but where appropriate i’d encourage you to do both.
They have 41,000+ active photographers, and provide daily updates on the best new submissions.
In general their curation and organization of photo’s is really impressive, and their
entire library is searchable.
Up next is Pexels Pexels is another site that has stunning images
on offer.
Although they are not as focused on organizing and curating as Unsplash, what they do focus
on is popularity of photographers, and their creations over the last 30-days.
They do this through photographer leaderboards where photographers are ranked according to
the their total number of downloads, and categorized based on popular searches.
You can also search for images via keywords or tags.
We then have Pixabay You might have heard of this one before, Pixabay
is one of the most popular royalty free image sites online.
It has probably one of the most extensive search and filter mechanisms, and you can
even filter by the camera it was taken with!
Other options include vertical or horizontal orientation, main colors, and dimensions.
Next is Snapstock Stocksnap have a great range of high quality
free stock images.
You are able to search via image tags, as well as filter via trending, views, downloads,
and favorites.
They also have their own image editing and retouching software called Snappa, that you
can download and use for free.
The next stock photo site is Realistic Shot Realistic shot doesn’t have as large a collection
as some of the other sites on this list, but the quality is every bit as good.
You are able to search for images, or filter via architecture, nature, people, travel,
or technology.
There is also the ability to sign up to receive 7 new images each week.
And they also stock vectors and other graphics.
We then have Life of Pix Life of Pix is a great looking site that makes
sure to display the best photo’s on a proper stage.
Instead of the tiled layout of most sites, the main page is more like a feed of fantastic
photographs.
They also have a ‘Photographer of the week award’ to make sure people who do excellent
work get acknowledged on a regular basis.
There is also a partner site, Life of Vids that distribute free videos.
Next is Gratisography This is one quirky looking site.
In keeping with that theme, many of the images seem to fit the same modern, hipster, quirky
style.
It is a pretty straightforward service, you can download images straight from the front
page.
And either search for images, or filter via genres which include animals, nature, objects,
people, urban, and whimsical.
We then have Jay Mantri A one man show.
Jay Mantri runs a free image and video repository all by himself.
If you want to start producing your content to sell (or make available for free), this
is the guy you wanna follow.
He regularly posts on social media to help you get inspired on what to photograph.
As you can expect from a solo venture the site is simplistic, and the images are incredible.
Following that we have Public Domain Archive What makes this site so interesting, is that
it not only provides new images produced by photographers but also archive images that
have gone into the public domain as a result of their copyright term expiring.
This means you can get authentic, really old photo’s that can give an interesting perspective
on the past.
We then have Split Shire Unfortunately for Split Shire, they chose
to display their images in very low resolution on their homepage.
This will inevitably lead many to just moving on to the next site.
But don’t be hasty, they have some really decent images on offer.
They also have free videos and a huge amount of categories that can be used to filter the
images.
Their “Top / Best” page looks much better.
Up next is Freestocks Not the biggest site, or the largest variety,
but Freestocks has some really good images for use that cover a great range of niches,
like fashion, food, and cities.
To give you an idea of the size, they only have 56 pages of around 20 images each.
But all the images can be searched, or viewed by using one of the category filters.
We then have Negative Space Negative Space makes excellent use of categories,
tags and search functionality to make it extremely easy to use, especially considering the sheer
amount of images available.
You can even search a color and image results that feature that color as its main color
will appear in your search results, magic!
Wrapping up the list of the best free stock image sites for commercial use, is Libreshot
Again, not the best looking site but it has an impressive offering.
You can also check popular images from the last 24 hours, as well as the most popular
images of all-time.
You can also edit the image straight from the site before downloading it thanks to Picozu.
And you also have the option to download smaller version of the image if required.
Our next sub category is the list of free niche stock photo websites with a CC0 licence,
or images available for personal and commercial use with no attribution required.
First on the list is Travel Coffee Book It doesn’t get more simple than this.
Travel Coffee Book is literally a feed of travel pics from the owners and willing submitters.
Everything goes on a OneDrive folder which they freely give you and you can download
the photos at will.
Not all the images are of the best quality, but the submissions are surprisingly good.
Next is Foodie’s Feed Don’t look at this site if you’re peckish!
You’re bound to get a serious case of the munchies.
This site has some truly beautiful and hunger-inducing images.
They really want professionals or aspiring professionals to use the free license platform
to build a portfolio and reputation.
You can sign up for more frequent image updates, and it features relevant food categories like
top-down and close up.
We then have Startup Stock Photos This site says exactly what it does.
It is a straightforward list of modern, trendy and inspiring photos that are perfect for
a startup blog, website, or for use in marketing collateral.
Startup entrepreneurs will especially appreciate the free photos considering that conserving
cash is the name of the game.
Up next is Free Nature Stock Another free image site run by a single, dedicated
author, Adrian Pelletier.
You can search for images according to hashtags.
The feed is filled with multi-colored sunsets, starry skies, candid shots of animals, and
plenty of greens.
The long-exposure shots of stars are especially impressive, and not something you get for
free every day.
We then have Style Stock Styled Stock is an elegant site, and features
feminine stock photography.
The images are graceful, delicate, and engaging, and consist mostly of pastels, black and white,
and soft colors.
If you are a fashion, beauty, or lifestyle blogger or operate a business in that space,
this site will be your jam.
With a handy search tool and the ability to filter via color, category, and date, this
is sure to impress.
We then have our next group of free stock photo sites.
These site feature images with various types of restricted and unrestricted creative commons
licences.
When using images from these sites, remember to review the licence type for each image.
To learn more about the different types of licences, check out the link to the creative
commons website in the description below.
Up first on this list we have Flickr Flickr started out as an image sharing site
but after an explosion in popularity and the quality and quantity of the images growing
it has become a go-to place to find images for re-use.
If you contribute to the site it offers an easy interface for organizing your photos
into albums or galleries.
You can also join groups that are like circles dedicated to a specific niches.
We then have Kaboompics This site definitely packs a punch.
It makes the bold claim of describing itself as a “Visual Explosion”.
It is an incredible site, and has an excellent, feature-rich search engine.
It also provides the color palette for every image, and is then able to recommend ‘like’
photos based on complementary color palettes, or images from the same photoshoot, or photographer.
Up next is ISOrepublic On top of a huge amount of free images, ISOrepublic
also offers “Premium Photo Packs”.
These packs are a collection of photographs about a similar topic or subject and there
are usually between 20-40 images per pack.
They cost around $15, which is reasonable for such a handy package.
They also have a nifty “Textures” category, something most other sites overlook.
Next is PicJumbo Picjumbo is also run by a single artistic
and charitable fellow named Viktor Hanacek.
Not only does he offer good images at a surprising rate for a lone contributor but he also wants
to tell his story through photos.
With a premium account, you get access to never before released photo’s as well as
an extra 30 new photos per month.
We then have New Old Pic This is a site much like Public Domain Archive,
except that it exclusively deals in old images that are free from any copyright (as far as
they know).
The site itself is a bit old school, and it doesn’t come with too many features or integrations
(the main sharing option is tumblr) but it does have some amazingly interesting photos.
Premium packs come with pre cropped and retouched photos and are worth checking out.
Up next is Stokpic Stokpic isn’t the most attractive site on
this list, but it shouldn’t be judged by its cover.
Its free and premium images have some great options and the images are usually touched
up, and stylistic.
You can reuse the free images in any way except for redistribution.
And premium members get new pictures sent to them.
There is even a clock counting down the time until the next delivery.
Lasty, we’ll highlight the top four paid stock photo sites.
In case you can’t find what you’re looking for in on the free stock photo sites.
Our favourite option is Shutterstock Shutterstock is arguably the biggest photo
collection and definitely the most well-known.
In total there are more than 125 million photos, graphics, videos, and music tracks.
It is by far the best bang for your buck and strikes a balance between quality images and
the right price.
Image cost between $5 – 10 on average depending on your plan.
There are even options for enterprise subscriptions and you can pay to have your license reach
extended.
Next is DepositPhotos DepositPhotos is a cheaper alternative to
some of the other paid sites.
However, their curation and organization isn’t as stringent, which can make it a little harder
to find the perfect photos or graphics you want.
It has one of the better ranges of vector images available and should be one of the
first sites you go to if that’s what you’re looking for.
Most subscriptions work out to be a $1 or less per image, so it’s easy on your wallet.
We then have iStock iStock even trumps Deposit Photo when it comes
to vector images, infographics, and illustrations.
It also has a very intuitive collection of categories, and it should be very easy for
you to find examples of what you want.
On average it will cost you around $7 – 20 per image for their recommended plan, which
is a little pricey.
Our last stock photo site is Stocksy Right off the bat, a fantastic aspect of Stocksy
is that it has a ‘Mobile’ category which exclusively contains images perfect for mobile
display.
Although not extensive, their categories do cover the most important areas.
The quality of images on here though is impeccable and you will struggle to find a higher overall
standard.
They don’t offer any subscription packages and the average cost per image starts at $15
for small images, up to $125 for extra large.
Making it the most expensive option.
Well, that completes our review of the best stock photo sites for 2017 and 2018, If you
liked this video hit the like button, and remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel
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