Images are a vital part of the quality content but what if you don’t have a quality image of your own?
As it says –
A picture is worth a thousand words
It’s incredibly time-consuming and hard to find the right creative images to go with your blog post or even to include them on your landing page, isn’t it?
We understand because we’ve been building websites and landing pages for many clients as a web design and development company for a while and also running this blog to know the value of getting the right images and quickly!
We’ve researched the net to find you 10 awesome website for high-quality, royalty-free stock images that you can download for free, without any watermark and they’re good even for commercial use.
Before we get to those 10 websites though, let’s understand how the royalty-free license works.
What is the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) License?
This list covers websites which have photos published under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means downloading from these websites have no-hassle of copyrights and usability issues. You can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including any personal, commercial, or legal purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or that particular website. But you can’t sell these photos.
So, here’s the list. Make the most of it.
Unsplash
The site offers 7 readymade categories for refining your search for stock photos. The categories are Building, Food & Drink, Nature, Objects, People, and Technology. If you are looking for something specific, just type the keyword in the search box or simply spend time going through their entire database of beautiful pictures. The website also features some of the best web projects made from Unsplash for your inspiration. If you subscribe to their mailing list, 10 new photos will be delivered to your inbox every 10 days. You can automatically sync these photos to your Dropbox with Splashbox. Unsplash also allows people to submit their photos to their website.
Website Link – unsplash.com
Pexels
Pexels is a website which uses a hand-picked curated collection of stock photos from other free stock images websites such as Unsplash, Gratisography, Little Visuals and many more. The images with the most views in the last 30 days make it to the popular category on the homepage. Their search criterion is more refined with micro categories like Sun, Leaves, River, Night, Sky etc. Along with the photographer’s details, the site also mentions the minute technical details of the photograph such as camera used, ISO, focal length, etc. An interesting feature is to search for photos via colour tone. When you click on any photo it shows different options of colours and similar photo available in that colour tone. This can be used to select photos according to branding needs.
Website Link – Pexels.com
Pixabay
Pixabay is another tool for getting hassle-free good quality photos. To download a photo, you can browse through the 20 readymade categories or simply put your keyword in the search box. Pixabay also has sponsored images from Shutterstock (another website with paid images) to provide a choice of professional photos. Those images are marked with the Shutterstock logo. Their Editor’s Choice section hand-picks and features the best images of the website.
Website Link – Pixabay.com
Stocksnap.io
Stocksnap.io is a repository of beautiful and free-to-use stock photography. The website curates the best stock images from around the web and also select photos from a number of daily submissions. The site has a handy search feature making it easy to browse through the thousands of images available. In addition, the website categorises the photos on the basis of date, trending, number of views, number of downloads, and favourites, so you can find the most popular photos available.
Website Link – Stocksnap.io
Picjumbo
This free stock photo website was started by a web designer; Viktor Hanacek in 2013 when he recognized the need for high-quality photos in full resolution for web-based projects. The site is a treasure for aesthetically appealing stock photos. The site uploads new photos every day, mostly 3500+ pixels in wide. You can simply download and use them for web design, sliders, apps, backgrounds, or templates. The site provides a quick search option by providing a list of 15 categories and many ready-made tags. If that’s not enough, you can type in your keyword in the search box to get the related images.
Website Link – Picjumbo.com
Splitshire
Splitshire is a collection of stunning personal shots by Italian photographer and graphic designer- Daniel Nanescu. While designing graphics he realised it is so hard to find great pictures and started Splitshire. The site has 17 readymade categories for browsing photos. The site features a beautiful collection ranging from landscapes to candid shots of people, all in high resolution. The website also has a small collection of HD quality videos which also can be downloaded for free.
Website Link – Splitshire
DesignerPics
Like many others Jeshu John, an Indian web designer & developer also faced the challenge for the lack of free quality photographs. Thus, DesignerPics was started. The website has 10 readymade categories for choosing and downloading high-resolution photos. An interesting category is ‘Concept’ where the photos are categorised as per some of the business concepts marketer’s use.
Website Link – DesignerPics
Stokpic
They say ‘Not everyone has hundreds of dollars For Stock Photos’. That seals the deal. They offer high-quality free photos, categorised in 16 different categories. Apart from they have a list of ‘Latest 100’ and ‘Favourites’ to refine the search. An interesting feature is their subcategories, where they classify the photos further. For example, the architecture category has subheadings- Inside, Outside, Modern and Old Architecture.
Website Link – Stokpic
Kaboompics
Another web designer from Poland, Karolina, struggled with the everyday issue of finding stock images and started this website. KaboomPics is a collection of good quality photos offered for free to bloggers, website owners, small businesses, freelancers & social media ninjas.
Website Link – Kaboompics
Gratisography
If you need something surreal, fun, and original, Gratisography is like a breath of fresh air. His photos have a surreal edge and they are perfect if you’re sick and tired of stock photo clichés. Compared to other websites mentioned here, Gratisography has less variety of free stock images, but new pictures appear every week and you’re sure to stand out from the crowd. This collection was created by talented graphic designer Ryan McGuire, who likes everything quirky. And the quality of images you gonna finds here is par excellence.
Website Link – Gratisography
Conclusion
So there you go, we hope these 10 amazing websites with beautifully crafted photos will help you find the perfect Royalty Free Stock Images for your own website or your next project.
Need a custom image or banner to be made for your website – Contact us for Graphic Design Services – Click Here
We would be happy to hear in the comments section below if you’ve come across any other fantastic additions to this list.
