Where to Get Free Images for Website Design or Blog?

October 25th, 2018
Free images for your website

How many times have you heard that a picture is worth a thousand words? If there’s anything that will make your website look more professional, credible and appealing in no time, it’s definitely adding quality images. You don’t have to be a graphic designer or photographer to have access to high resolution images for free.

Images on the website engage your fans

Enhancing your website’s visual appeal can be a game-changer for any kind of site – personal, business, e-store, or blog. Choose the perfect images. They hold the power to instantly elevate your products, amplify your influence, and establish trust.

People crave visually engaging, easily digestible content. High-quality, relevant images serve as your website’s ambassadors, swiftly conveying your message and elevating the user experience. In a nutshell, they’re the key to boosting views, keeping visitors glued to your site, and sparking share-worthy moments.

Website builder library free images

If you are creating your website with a website builder, it most probably provides you with a nice library of images, as Webnode does. For most people, these galleries can be more than sufficient, but it might not perfectly satisfy the needs or tastes of all people.

A search engine like Google Images will quickly show you any shot you could ever want, but using them will almost certainly violate someone’s copyright as many of the images have been used illegally. Fortunately, there is a simple and safe alternative: a growing number of websites with beautiful stock photography popping up all over the web. Yes, there are plenty of online libraries offering free images that you can use, even commercially, at no cost to you.

Licenses – how to recognize free images

How free is free? Some websites allow you to download pictures for private use (wallpaper for your screen) but will disallow images for commercial use (e.g. business cards, websites or posters). Thankfully, many photographs are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under creative commons zero public domain dedication (or CC0), meaning that you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Some photos, however, may still require attribution.

Where to get free CC0 images

We created a list of our favorite websites that either support, or are fully composed of, CC0 images available in the public domain. The owners of these images have allowed users to modify, edit, and use their images. Even though we’ve done our best, please note, that you should always check the license of the image to ensure that uses are permitted and if it allows for what you plan to do with the image. Be sure to read each website carefully, as terms may vary over time.

7 Sites to Find Free Images for Your Web or Blog

1. Pixabay

Pixabay is a vibrant community of creative people releasing all content under CC0. You will find more than 1.5 million royalty free stock photos, vector graphics, illustrations and also videos safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist.

2. Pexels

All photos on Pexels can be used for free commercial and non-commercial purposes, without any attribution required. You can be creative and edit the photos as you like. The Pexels team takes all images from other free image sources like Pixabay, Gratisography, Little Visuals, etc.

3. Unsplash

In 2013, Unsplash added the tagline “10 photos every 10 days” when they only had 10 photos for the first version of Unsplash. Then, it has grown into an industry-leading photography community. In April 2018, it passed 500,000 photos. Available for commercial and non-commercial uses, editing and copying allowed and no attribution required.

4. Picjumbo

It all started when all of the regular stock photo sites rejected photos of a Czech designer and photographer due to “insufficient quality.“ In 2013, Viktor Hanacek created Picjumbo with free pictures in full resolution and now counts more than 6 million downloads. All photos are free for commercial use, however, registered trademarks and brands must be respected.

5. Gratisography

They claim to be the world’s quirkiest collection of free high-resolution images, world’s best, most creative images included. If you are searching for photos you just won’t find anywhere else, try Gratisography. You can find almost anything you can think of.

6. StockSnap

Hundreds of high-quality and high-resolution stock images free from all copyright restrictions (CC0) are added weekly on Stocksnap, with no attribution required. Check StockSnap’s tag-based category system to find images that convey the right mood, feeling, sense or content that you need.

7. ISO Republic

ISO Republic offers thousands of high-resolution free stock photos under CC0, with more being added weekly. They also launched Foodie Factor, a website providing the best free food and drink stock photos. This website will make you indescribably hungry.

Pictures ready? It is time to image optimization