Working as a graphic designer, I guess you’re just as busy as I am. We don’t always have the time and opportunity to take photos for our designs. Luckily, there are many free online resources where you can find free photos for commercial and non-commercial use.
Many stock websites have strict rules on copyright and charge license fees either per photo or with a monthly license. Be super cautious when you download and use any images online because they’re probably not free.
In this article, you’ll find 10 awesome websites where you can download images and use them in your design for free.
Note: websites can change their terms of use. Please check the copyright information on the individual website/photo to check the terms at the time of use.
Table of Contents
1. stocksnap.io
StockSnap.io has hundreds of high-resolution images added to this site weekly and all images published are being shared under the Creative Commons 0 License, which means it should be free to use even for commercial use and requires no attribution.
2. unsplash.com
My favorite! Unsplash offers free images in a variety of genres for download, but you’re always welcome to contribute and credit the photographers 🙂
3. Freepik
Freepik has a huge selection of free high-quality stock photos, and other graphic design assets such as vector images, illustrations, and mockups.
All stock images and design resources can be used in any personal or commercial project however, attribution is required when you use free resources. Or you can get the premium plan to use all images without attribution.
Freepik users can download graphic resource formats compatible with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.
4. Negative space.co
All photos are released under the Creative Commons 0 Licence, which makes them free to use and share. These images have been chosen for their negative space and are usually used by designers looking for somewhere to add their headlines or graphics. You can even search by what area of the image has the negative space!
5. picjumbo.com
Pic Jumbo has over 800 photos that are free to download. You can also choose to sign up to receive the images by email or have the option to pay for access to extra features and images on the website.
6. pixabay.com
All images on Pixabay have been released under the Creative Commons License CC0, meaning they have been released into the public domain and you can share them free of copyright. You can use them in your Photoshop projects and share them without giving attribution.
7. pexels.com
All photos on Pexels are free for personal and commercial use. The photos are released under the Creative Commons CC0 License but they mention a notable restriction which is that any identifiable people in the photos may not appear in a bad light or in a way that they may find offensive unless they give their consent.
Noted: this restriction may apply to all images released under this license and may apply to the other sites mentioned on this page.
8. splitshire.com
Splitshire has a collection of royalty-free photos and images for commercial use. They are the personal photos of Daniel Nanescu and the site boasts of over 600,000 downloads and 6,000,000 page views with images being used far and wide and on sites like the Huffington Post & CNN. Be sure to check this one out.
9. Canva
Canva is quite different from the others, it’s more of a graphic design tool but it does offer some nice photos free for commercial use.
It does require an extra step to download the photos. You’ll have to create a design, and then add the photo to the template before downloading.
10. moveast.me
Moveast.me is the story of a traveler who releases his images into the public domain. All of his images are released under the CC0 license. There are some very unique and beautiful images perfect for nature, and travel-related designs.
11. cupcake.nilssonlee.se
All images on Cupcake are licensed under the CC0 license. They are labeled as FREE (do whatever you want) photos and are personal photos of Jonas Wimmerstrom.
Note: photos on the main nilssonlee website are professional photos of Jonas and are not copyright-free.
Hope you find the sites useful!
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