Webcami’s Ultimate Guide to Stock Images

Having excellent images is crucial for any website. While using your own photos is the ideal choice, finding suitable images in your collection can be challenging. For example, you may be planning to hire a photographer in the future but require something immediately. It’s understandable to search the web for an excellent image for your website, but there are pitfalls to avoid.

One potential problem is saving images directly from Google or Bing. This action can lead to severe consequences, such as being sued for copyright infringement. Unfortunately, such cases occur, and avoiding such risks is essential.

Fortunately, there are numerous resources available that can help you avoid these issues. These resources benefit my clients, fellow designers needing placeholder photos, or anyone seeking a list of reliable stock photography sources.

Remember: Double-check the license of any photo you plan to use for your website. If the license doesn’t call for a mention of the author, it’s always a nice thing to do in your alt tags.

FREE IMAGE RESOURCES:

https://unsplash.com/

Free high-resolution photos.

https://www.pexels.com/

All photos on Pexels are free for any personal and commercial purpose.

https://wordpress.org/openverse/

There are over 600 million images and audio files in Openverse, a searchable catalog of free media by Creative Commons, a non-profit organization whose mission is to improve access to and exchange of culture online.

The above three options are the ones I use the most! Here are others:

http://freenaturestock.com/

Royalty-free Nature Stock Photos. Use them however you want.

http://www.lifeofpix.com/about/

Free high-resolution photos, no copyrights restrictions. Images for personal and commercial use.

http://picography.co/

Picography by Hidden Depth provides stunning photography for use however you like.

https://travelcoffeebook.com/

Sharing beautiful travel moments. All photos are listed under cc0. That means you can do whatever you want with them.

https://stocksnap.io/

Hundreds of high-resolution images are added weekly. Free from copyright restrictions.

https://www.pikwizard.com

Free stock images for use on websites, both non-commercial and commercial.

https://foodiesfeed.com/

FoodiesFeed is a resource of free realistic food images in high resolution and free digital goods related to food.

PAID IMAGE RESOURCES:

http://www.istockphoto.com/

Less searching. More finding. Discover royalty-free images, illustrations, and videos that make you stand out. I have been purchasing images here for clients since 2006. Huge selection. Price ranges from $15 to $45 per photo. Discounts on prepaid credits. Vector-based graphics, too.

iStock is the paid resource I use the most.

https://www.shutterstock.com/

Over 100 million royalty-free stock images / Over 800,000 new stock images added weekly. Another huge selection to purchase. Vector resources as well

https://www.freepik.com/

Freepik costs $144 annually and has a great variety of photos for use.  They also offer vectors, videos, PSD files and templates.  I subscribe to this and love it!