Free Stock Photos for your Website – 11 Solid Sources

Looking for some photos for your website or blog? Looking for an option that won’t break the bank? There are a lot of great stock photography sites out there that offer their wares at reasonable prices, especially for the low resolution images that are typically needed for the net. But, while cheap is good, free is even better!

Wouldn’t you agree?

When I first started looking for free stock photography a few years ago (on account of working on virtually no budget), I was amazed at just how much material was actually out there! There are literally dozens, if not hundreds of different sites from which you can grab free photos, which you can use with varying degrees of freedom in your designs. Today, I want to look at 11 of these resources, which I deem to be amongst the best and most valuable.

Collections

Collections are sites – or parts of sites – that have a standing archive of free photographs for you to download and use in your designs. Some sites dedicated entirely to giving away free stock photos. Others are pay sites that have included a free section in order to encourage more visitors and/or to provide samples of the images that are available.

stock.xchng

Probably the largest and most well known repository of free stock photos, stock.xchng is an invaluable resource for finding free stock photos.

stock.xchng

There is a lot of really great stock on this site, but there is not a lot of consistency. There does not appear to be any real minimum standard, so the images range from small to absolutely huge. Some of them are nice and crisp, but most have at least some level of excess noise. Many are just slightly out of focus. Others are significantly out of focus.

The notable exception, of course, are the computer generated images, which unfortunately only come in JPEG format, despite the fact that many of them were clearly designed as vectors.

Still, it’s a great resource and usually the first site I turn to. Many of the defects in the images can be fixed with a bit of Photoshop, or become unnoticeable when the image is resized for the web, and the range of images is probably the best I’ve seen from the free collections.

Stock Vault

I only recently discovered Stock Vault as I was doing research for this post, so I haven’t had the chance to give it an extensive test drive, but I did download a few images and I have to say that I am extremely impressed with the quality of the stock!

StockVault

Overall, the images seem to have a much higher minimum standard than stock.xchng, which is a bonus. It’s nice to know that the larger image will still look as good as the thumbnail. On the other hand, the collection doesn’t seem overly extensive, so you may be somewhat limited in what you can find.

Still, it looks like a great resource, and it’s definitely going to stay in my bookmarks!

PhotoVaco

Here’s another one that I only discovered recently. I’m not quite as stoked about this find as I was about StockVault, but it’s still probably worth at least checking out.

PhotoVaco

Again, I’ve only downloaded a few images from this site, but I have found that the quality is not quite as high as what I’ve seen over at StockVault. Some of the images are just a bit blurry or have a bit too much noise. Also, the collection is really limited, especially when it comes to people – they only have three images in their People category, all of which are shadowy and obscure. This probably has something to do with wanting to avoid the whole issue of model releases.

Still, free images are free images, so you may want to check this one out. They may have exactly what you’re looking for!

FreeDigitalPhotos

This site is great for those of us who are looking for stock photography specifically for use in websites or other forms of digital display. FreeDigitalPhotos gives away high quality, but low res images for free.

FreeDigitalPhotos

The photographs on this site are also available for purchase at higher resolutions, with prices ranging quite modestly from $5 to $10. This means that the site is also great for doing mockups for print. If you find an image you like, just download the free image to use in your low-resolution proofs. When the piece is approved, you can then go and buy the image at the required resolution.

BigStockPhoto

BigStockPhoto also has a collection of freebie photos, which contains some really great shots which are ideal for use on your website or blog.

Big Stock Photo

The images all seem to be strictly in low res, 72 dpi format, with a standard width of 500px. So, unless you are going to be using them in very small formats, they won’t translate all that well to print. Also, you should note that the images all have the BigStockPhoto name branded in the lower left hand corner, which can be a bit of a pain.

Lastly, the collection contains 499 images, and has contained 499 images for quite some time. Unlike some of the other free collections we’ve looked at here, this one seems to have remained static. Personally, I preferred it when BigStockPhoto gave away one high res image a week, like some of the other sites listed below.

Dreamstime

This is another one of my personal favorites. After stock.xchng, Dreamstime is probably the site that I visit the most. Sometimes, I will even go there first, especially if I am looking for an image that I assume will be in abundant supply.

Dreamstime

The free images here are generally taken from larger collections on the pay-for-use section of the site. Artists provide these images almost like teasers – samples of their larger body of work! As such, I find that the quality of the images is usually pretty good, at least from a clarity perspective. Technically and artistically, the shots are not always the best.

There are some great images to be had here though! Some of my favorite stock images have come from Dreamstime’s free photo section!

deviantART

deviantART has a ton of stock photos available, though they tend to have a much more limited usage. Most of the images you will find here are posted primarily as reference material for other artists.

deviantART

There are all kinds of different materials available on this site, in a range of different formats and of hugely varied quality. Each contributor is also responsible for establishing their own usage rules and licensing agreements, so there are all kinds of different restrictions. For example, I know some photographers who produce incredible work, but will only allow their stock to be used for art that is displayed on deviantART itself. If you want to display your image anywhere else, you need specific permission. Other artists are much more open and will allow you to use their stock for pretty much anything.

Given that many of these photographs are indented as reference material, their subject matter tends to vary somewhat from the other sites in this post. There is generally more emphasis on human figures, costumes, accessories and settings. However, if you are looking for stock photography primarily for artistic reference, then deviantART can be a goldmine!

Giveaways

Some of the larger, pay websites, also give away free photos from their collections. They give away one stock image every week or day. The image is predetermined, so you don’t get much of a choice, but sometimes its worth downloading them anyhow, just to start building your collection of stock. I’ve been doing this for a while (though haven’t been disciplined to remember to grab every image), and I have already found this growing library to be a wonderful resource!

Crestock

Of these sites, Crestock is the only one that actually gives away a new image every single day! I hesitate to use the term photograph, because often these freebies are vector files. Still pretty sweet, though.

Crestock

Occasionally, the images do seem as though they may be of extremely limited use, but there are some absolutely incredible images to be had this way! The site also offers an RSS feed of the daily free stock photo, so you can just check out the current offering in your favorite feed reader and decide if you want to go get it. Super convenient.

Recently, Crestock has also released the Freebie Images plugin for WordPress, which allows you search and insert high quality, but low res images into your blog posts for free! An awesome little value add for an already awesome company!

Fotolia

Every day, Fotolia posts a number of what they call their “extras”. From what I can gather, these are images that were submitted but did not meet the quality standards for resale. I guess the artists then have a choice to make them available as free downloads.

Fotolia

As you can probably imagine, then, the quality of many of these images is not the greatest. Sometimes it is just plain bad. And, since you never know what you’re going to get on a given day, it may not seem like the greatest resource. I do check it out from time to time, though. Occasionally I do find an image or two which I think might be useful, usually as reference material for drawing or painting (digitally, of course).

Also, you can almost always be guaranteed to find some sort of animal photos.

ShutterStock

ShutterStock gives away on free photo every week. Since these images come directly from their main collection of photographs, the quality is always great.

Shutterstock

Typically, I’ve found that the images are general enough that I can foresee some circumstance in which it might be useful, which is always nice. It always feels better to download an image when you think it might actually be usable one day.

Shutterstock’s free image is typically updated every Tuesday, so be sure to grab it before then, or else you’ll miss your chance! They also provide a free vector of the week, though I find these to be less useful.

iStockphoto

Yes, the grand daddy of all stock photography sites also offers some free images! Like Shutterstock, there is one free image every single week!

iStockPhoto

Unlike, Shutterstock, though, iStock has an archive of their free images, and the photos from the previous three weeks always remain available. I can’t tell you how nice this is! Unless your away (or forget) for more than a month, you can always miss a week and still be able to grab that week’s free photo!

Of course, the quality of the images is always extremely high, as you would expect from iStock, with it’s super high image standards!

Well there you have it, 11 different sites where can get free photographs and start building your stock collection. Please, please, please just be sure to read the license agreement, and use the images accordingly! Which ones are your favorites? Do you know of any other high quality resource? I’d love to hear about them!

Posted by Matt Ward | permalink | 34 Responses »

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Categories: Photography, Resources

Tags: free, Photography, resource, stock

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Posted: 8:55 AM on November 20, 2009