Introduction:
Everyone likes to read quality content, but an appropriate high-quality image with the quality content takes the entire article to a different level, increasing the user experience and understanding. And it brings us to the main topic as to what are the Free Websites to Download Royalty-Free Stock Images.
In the previous articles, you would have seen the various images I have used in my articles. And you would have liked some creatives and would have thought, from where do I get those images. Sometimes it’s incredibly time-consuming and hard to find the right creative photos to go with your blog post or even include them on your landing page.
Are you one of those who don’t have a quality image or struggling to find one?
So in this article, I will show you different free websites to download royalty-free stock images. That is high quality, with no watermark, and which are suitable even for commercial use.
And before we get to those lists of websites, let’s understand how the download & royalty-free stock image license works in the online world.
What is the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) License?
The below list includes websites that have images published under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. It means downloading from these websites won’t have usability issues or copyrights issue by the photographer or that website. You can copy, change, and use the photos for free, including personal, commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or that website. You can’t sell these photos as the only condition you have to make a note.
List of Free Websites To Download Royalty-Free Stock Images.
Canva.com
Canva.com is my first preference for stock images and graphic creation. Canva is an online drag-and-drop graphics design platform. Canva can create professional visual content like social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, etc… Canva.com also offers free stock photos. You can design with millions of stock photographs, vectors, and illustrations available inside the dashboard to create a fantastic design.
In the Canva Free plan, you get hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics. If you go with Canva Pro, you get 75+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio and free-to-use, and many more features for designing creatives.
Crello.com
Crello.com is my next preference for stock images and graphics and animation design for social and web platforms. Crello is a freemium graphic design tool similar to canva, which has many free photographs for you to use. In Crello.com, there are three modes/options customers can choose from for stock images.
- Crello Free: In Crello, there are many photographs, images, templates, designs that are Free and marked on the thumbnail image. These are available to everyone for unlimited usage. These lists also include some of the illustrations, icons, and shapes that are for free use.
- Premium (Golden Diamond Icon) – The Premium is a collection of 500,000 top-quality images worth $7M. These images are not available on other free stock websites. They are free to use for Crello PRO users when they get a subscription plan!
- Paid ($0.99) – Except for the images marked with a free and golden diamond icon, some photos show a $0.99 mark on thumbnail images. These are exclusive content and must be paid for by the user. Crello Team doesn’t include these Paid images in your subscription plans.
Even if you don’t use the paid option, there is still a vast collection of images, which you can choose from crello.com. You can customise the size in their designing tool to use it according to your needs.
Unsplash – Photos for Everyone
It’s the next destination I go to for all the royalty-free images. Unsplash has become a community with more than 20 million creators. People from around the world have contributed over 250,000 photos across various categories. The site offers many readymade topics for refining your search for stock photos. Some of the types are Wallpapers, Nature, People, Architecture, Current Events, Fashion, Film, Health & Wellness, Spirituality, Technology, Travel, etc. Some new topics have arisen in 2020 like Covid-19, Work From Home, etc. to represent reality. You also get a search section, type the keyword of the image you are looking for, and go through their entire beautiful pictures database.
You can visit Unsplash to download royalty-free stock images.
Pexels.com
Pexels.com is again one of the best free stock photos & videos website. Just like Unsplash, it is a community with talented creators around the globe. In Pexel.com, they not only show the collection of their photos and videos, but they also outsource images from other free and high-quality stock images websites. Some examples of sites are Unsplash, Gratisography, Little Visuals.
An exciting feature in Pexels.com is to search for photos via colour tone. When you click on any image, it shows different options of colours and similar photo available in that colour tone. This feature can help you to select pictures according to branding needs. You can also download copyright free stock videos from the site.
To Download Royalty Free Stock Images visit Pexels.com.
FreePik
FreePik.com is one of the most trending websites in 2020 to download free stock pictures. Freepik website offers the best high-quality graphic resources for everyone. This website includes Free as well as Premium or paid contents as well. It includes vectors, illustrations, stock photos, PSD, icons, mockups, and presentations templates.
The parent Freepik Company comprises of three projects:
- Freepik – Browse and discover millions of high-quality vectors, photos, PSD files, icons, mockups, and presentations templates.
- Flaticon – Flaticon has millions of icons in all formats for all kinds of projects: presentations, apps, websites, catalogues, infographics, etc.
- Slidesgo – offers an extensive catalogue of free PowerPoint templates and Google Slides themes for creative presentations. These are customisable to suit the needs of users, so the possibilities are endless.
Visit Freepik, Flaticon or Slidesgo depending on your need for free resources for your project.
Pixabay
Pixabay is another tool to get hassle-free high-quality stock photos. It offers images from people all around the world and other image hosting sites. Pixabay also has sponsored images from iStock (another website with paid images) to provide a choice of professional photos. They mark those sponsored sections with links to istockphoto.com. Pixabay also offers a coupon code with a 20% discount if the user wants to buy professional images from istockphoto.com. Their Editor’s Choice section hand-picks and features the best pictures of the website.
Visit Pixabay.com and search in your preferred categories to get free stock images.
Stocksnap.io
Stocksnap.io is a repository of beautiful and high-quality free-to-use stock photos. Stocksnap offers these images under a single, simple CC0 license that lets you do what you want with all our photos, with no attribution required. The users can use StockSnap.io’s tag-based category system to browse and locate the images that convey the correct feeling, mood, or content for your needs.
To find the most popular stock photos available at – Stocksnap.io click here.
Picjumbo
Viktor Hanacek, a web designer in 2013 when he recognised the need for high-quality photos in a full resolution for web-based projects, started this free stock photo website. The site is a treasure for aesthetically appealing stock photos. The site uploads new photos every day, mostly 3500+ pixels. On the first section of the website, there are different trending topics or keywords through which you can filter the free stock images. If you scroll down, you can see the popular free stock photos. On these thumbnail images is a unique feature which says “More images like this”. On click, it takes you to a new tab with all the related pictures and similar looking photos which is very easy. You can get the desired image quickly. Visit the Picjumbo website here.
Burst (by Shopify)
Burst is a free stock photo platform for startups and entrepreneurs powered by Shopify. (Shopify is a leading eCommerce platform.) The images are a mix of royalty-free and Creative Commons. Since it is Free for commercial use, you can even sell mugs or t-shirts you designed using Burst stock images. Burst also has a menu link for business ideas which has in-depth case studies for getting your business and marketing campaigns started. Visit Burst and bookmark it to download beautiful, free stock photos you can use for any project or website.
Conclusion
So there you go. We hope these free websites with beautifully crafted stock photos will help you find the perfect images for your website or your next project.
Suppose you want free stock images and wish to customise for various web and social platforms. In that case, I recommend you go with Canva/Crello.
If you need free stock images for direct use, print media or any other commercial purposes then use websites like Unsplash, Freepik, Pexels and Pixabay.
There are some more free websites to download royalty-free stock images like Splitshire, DesignerPics, Kaboompics, Gratisography, Flickr, Depositphotos. You can check it when you have some free time to spare.
Also, If you are looking for a graphic designer to create custom graphics for your project, or you want to do a commercial product photoshoot, please contact me.
If you’ve come across any other fantastic additions to this free websites list to download royalty-free stock images, then share your thoughts in the comments section below. Also, please share it with your community on social media to share the knowledge you have learned.
