Everyone wants to give their website extra power by using images. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to use just any image, however much we would like to. Fortunately, tons of websites offer royalty-free images for free. Yes, you read that right, free photos, which you can use on your website. In this article, you will discover which sites these are and what to look out for when looking to search for free images on the web.
How Exactly Does It Work With Free Stock Images?
You are creating a website; all you need is a few images. But how exactly does that work?
Using royalty-free images, it’s pretty unclear at times. Which photo/image can you use now and which not? Never just use an image that you found somewhere online. You can get into a lot of legal trouble if you just use an image you shouldn’t use.
Copyrighted images
Copyright rests on almost every image. It doesn’t matter whether it is a logo, illustration, photo, graphic design, infographic, or something else. You better assume that it is copyrighted. Keep in mind that you first investigate whether you can use an image before you use it.
Also, don’t use images from social media. Many people think that these photos can be used, but that is not the case. If you post a picture on social media, you give that medium permission to post the image. However, that does not mean that everyone can use those images just like that. Copyright still applies to these images. Check out Creative Fabrica to obtain incredible stockphotos.
When can you use an image?
You now know what is not allowed and that you can hardly use any image just like that. Always do good research when you want to use an image, whether you can use this image. However, there are some exceptions, so you can still use images.
Embed the image
Embedding an image is allowed. The image remains on the website where you found the image. You place a code so that the image will still be visible on your website. The downside is that it often takes much longer for the image to load, and if the image is removed from the original website, it will no longer be visible on yours. Do you want to embed images? Make sure you don’t change the image at all.
Creative commons
Fortunately, it often happens that people permit in advance to be allowed to use images for free and royalty-free. Creative Commons licenses are then used. Nevertheless, there are still rules; for example, you may not use some images commercially. And you are not allowed to edit some images. Pay close attention to this before using an image.
Take Advantage Of Websites That Offer Best Free Stock Images
Nowadays, we see more and more that photographers permit to use their images for free. Often even without attribution and often you are also free to edit the images. You may not resell the images in most cases, but you may use them for commercial use.
Pay attention! Because this differs per website (and sometimes even per image), it is advisable to check this carefully in advance on the relevant website.
To make it a bit easier for all of you, we have investigated. We have listed the websites that we often use for you. And of course, there are more than just the websites we use.
40 Best Websites For Beautiful And Free Stock Images or Photos
Of course, the most beautiful images are the images you make yourself or made by a photographer. It makes sense that you will not hire a photographer for every image, so the following sites will help you find the most beautiful images and photos.
1 | Pexels
Pexels is arguably one of the most well-known sites where you can download royalty-free images for free. The site offers beautiful images of good quality. The only downside to Pexels is its fame. Due to the popularity of the website, the images may also be used by others.
All images on Pexels can be used for free for commercial and non-commercial use. Giving credit to the photographer/owner or Pexels is not necessary but always appreciated.
2 | Unsplash
Unsplash offers a lot of high-quality images. Via Unsplash, you download all images for free, and a source reference is not necessary. From Unsplash, they recommend mentioning the name of the photographer as a thank you.
As they put it themselves, “Unsplash grants, you an irrevocable, non-exclusive copyright license to download, copy, modify, distribute, export, and use photos from Unsplash, including for commercial purposes, without the permission of or by the photographer or Unsplash. to point out. “
3 | Pixabay
Besides Pexels, Pixabay is a very well-known website, where you can download images for free. A significant advantage of Pixabay is that illustrations, vector files, and videos are also offered. What is ideal about Pixabay? You can search in Dutch!
Furthermore, Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives sharing copyright-free images and videos. All content is released under Creative Commons CC0, making it safe to use without asking permission or giving credit to the artist/image creator/photographer – even for commercial purposes.
4 | Iso republic
New images every day! ISO republic uploads new images every day, from food to landscapes and from work related to travel. You can go to ISO republic for almost all categories.
5 | life of pix
Sometimes you come across toppers, and this is another one! Life of pix offers the photos of countless photographers. View the photos per category, or choose to view the work per photographer. Add photographers to your favorites list so that you are always up to date with the work of your favorite photographer!
6 | PicJumbo
Picjumbo offers you new photos every day that you can use for free on your website or for your blog. You can also purchase paid packages specially put together for bloggers, designers, and companies.
7 | Styled stock
Via Styled stock, you will find all kinds of images you can use as a female entrepreneur. Everyone is, of course, free to use the images, but you can see that the images have a feminine style.
8 | Gratisography
Here you will find lots of images that sometimes you need a little humor to like. But in principle, you will also find enough images that everyone can use!
9 | Splitshire
Splitshire is a website operated by a graphic designer and photographer. This is reflected in the fact that you come across all kinds of images on this site. From abstract images to fashion and animals, you will find it all!
10 | Dreamstime
Dreamstime wants to promote paid photos by offering free images. The free images are of lightly lower quality but still good enough to use on your website or blog post.
11 | Barn images
Since 2015, two photographers from Latvia have made their material available. You can use the images for free, but they also indicate: donating is allowed.
12 | Kaboompics
A wide variety of images, high-quality photos, and many categories. You can find it all on Kaboompics. You may use the images for commercial purposes, but you may not sell them.
13 | Free stocks
Again a website full of beautiful images, divided into different categories. Worth it if you want to look elsewhere for your images.
14 | Fancy crave
Fancycrave is committed to providing photos that you won’t find anywhere else. They provide beautiful photos, unfortunately not everything is available to everyone. For some photos, you need a premium account. What are particular excellent particulars that all images are placed in categories, which makes searching easy!
15 | Foca stock
The photos on this site are divided into different collections, including Work + Tech and Getting Work Done. In addition, the site offers many nature photos, and excellent, at Check-in that so the opening the nice fact is that the same person took all photos.
16 | Foodies Feed
Are you looking for images of food? Then take a quick look at FoodiesFeed. This website is full of images of food and drink. Not all photos are of the same sound quality, but there are a lot of photos. You would spontaneously get hungry seeing all those beautiful images.
17 | Negative Space
New photos every week? Then you have come right place at Negative Space. Every week the collection is supplemented with new stock photos. Friendly and especially handy, you can filter very easily and quickly. For example, filter the gallery by category and color.
18 | Stocksnap
You may have heard of this site or maybe never (of course you can). StockSnap offers incredibly versatile photos, as well as photos that you really won’t find on every website. Are you going to take a look? Then be careful not to keep scrolling through these photos for too long.
19 | Skitter Photo
This website offers you all kinds of photos from different photographers. As a photographer, you can sign up to share your work, and as a user, you can download the most beautiful images. You can even use the images commercially, but always check this carefully in advance!
20 | Stick pic
When you open this page, you immediately get a good feeling. The photos have a soft color, which radiates a particular atmosphere. All images are shown in different categories. We really like images with people in them, and we can have fun here. Stokpic offers a lot of photos where people can be seen! But even if you are not looking for photos with people in it, you can undoubtedly succeed here!
21 | Creative Commons
Via Flickr Creative Commons, all kinds of users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license. For you, that means that you can use them on your website or your blog. Have a look at the thousands of images on offer.
22 | Google LIFE’s Image Archive
You have already seen several gems in this list, but this is very special. A collaboration with Google and LIFE has manifested itself in this database. You will find all the old photos here, and by old, we mean old. You will find images from the year 1750 to the present. Best of all, you can use the images freely! You can search the entire database, but you can also add source: Life in the search bar.
23 | Rijksstudio
This is quite a gem; we found out during the search for the best websites. Perhaps already known to some, but we (unfortunately) did not know about the existence of this website. Through this website, you will find all kinds of images of the Rijksmuseum. You can compile entire collections or search the collections of others. It is a matter of taste, but you can determine your style and be much more unique than others.
24 | Travel Coffee book
Do you want photos taken all over the world? Travel coffee book has them! The website offers you all kinds of photos taken during different trips. From Europe to Asia and America, you will find it all!
25 | Morguefile
#Morguefile. This website has divided all photos into hashtags. Looking for images of robots, search for #robots. Do you want pictures of small animals? Then search #babyanimals.
26 | Picography
Are you looking for beautiful photos taken and collected by photographers? Then take a look at Picography.
27 | PicNoi
One of our favorites is PicNoi. This site is a collection of portraits, and you will find all kinds of portraits, from street portraits to posed portraits, and from a person to entire groups. PicNoi wants to see a better reflection of society in stock photos, and they try to convey that through the photos they offer.
28 | Cupcake
Are you looking for beautiful nature photos? Then take a look at the Cupcake website. In addition to all the beautiful nature photos, you will find countless other photos.
29 | Life of Vids
This article is about images, we know. But we didn’t want to keep this from you. Via Life of vids, you can download free videos to use for whatever you want. If you use the videos, leave a link now and then, which is nice anyway.
30 | Iconfinder
This one may not quite fit the list of images, but it is worth checking out. Nowadays, we use a lot of icons. An icon often makes the whole a bit more visual and more apparent. Super handy and fun to use!
31 | Free Images
Free Images offers more than 400,000 photos. You will find everything, from nature to people and from art to fashion and beauty. Free Images is widely used by sites such as NU.nl and Frank watching. Worth taking a look at!
Check-in
32 | Freepik
Have a look here if you are looking for graphics. You will find all kinds of images that you can use as background.
33 | Imagecarrier
Via this website, you can easily share images on Facebook and Twitter. Check-in advance per photo what you can do with it and whatnot. For all photos that apply, you may not include them in your collection for distribution.
34 | Burst
Burst provides images for entrepreneurs. It was founded to help entrepreneurs improve their products, websites that The open. Very and marketing campaigns. There is work by photographers, but most of the work is self-made. The images are divided into different business categories.
35 | Realistic Shots
You will find all kinds of images via Realistic Shots. Very handy! They offer an email service. You will receive an email with photo suggestions every week. You don’t always have to search for yourself.
36 | RGB Stock
Again a website full of beautiful photos. You do need an account to use the images for free and royalty-free. But… creating the account is also free so that you can use these photos without too much effort.
37 | Open Photo
You do not need an account for this website, but you have to look carefully at each photo to see if you can use it. The license can differ per photo, so pay attention to this. The open photo offers the photos of collectors, very nice to have a look at
38 | Jay Mantri
Jay Mantri has collected an impressive gallery of all kinds of high-quality images. This site is worth a look. Oh yes … there are also some fantastic images to use as a background!
39 | Moveast
This is a website of a traveling Portuguese man. He travels all over the world and shoots the best pictures. Good luck to fantastic we can use them for free! You will encounter everything from landscapes to people and much more.
40 | The Graphics Fairy
Are you looking for vintage illustrations and beautiful old-school images? Then take a look at The Graphics Fairy. You will find all kinds of illustrations with a vintage look here.
Reduce the file size of your image
A tool that we usually use ourselves is Optimizilla. All you have to do is upload your file. The tool does the rest itself. Your image will be resized without losing quality. It is also helpful to know that you can also make some adjustments yourself. If you want the file to be even smaller, increase the percentage. You can see the comparison between the large and small images to see the quality easily. As soon as it decreases, it is wiser to stop reducing or reduce it less.
Reduce the resolution of your images
It often happens that the image you downloaded has a huge resolution. Some images even achieve a resolution higher than 6000 * 4000 pixels. Most monitors, and yours, too, achieve a resolution of 1920 * 1080 pixels.
Using an image that far exceeds this is of no use at all. The image is so large that it takes longer to load. So occasionally, it is necessary that you have to change the resolution of the image.
You can use various website for this. This website is self-explanatory. You upload the image and follow the steps to be taken. The best thing about this website?
You can also specify a file format, quality, and maximum file size.
