There are so many places you can turn to online for free stock photos.
For every free image website, there are 100 posts and lists of those image services. That’s a bit overwhelming right? Each time I see one of those lists I get a bit of anxiety because I know it’s too much information.
I want to simplify your life beyond creating simple graphics. I want to give you the ONE resource you need for free images.
You’ll find tons of great stuff such as:
- photography
- illustrations
- vectors
Enough with all the talk, though, where do you need to go find all of this and better yet why is it the best?
Here it is, your single source:
Why It’s The Best
You’ll find a lot of great resources and they’re all free. It also makes your life easier because images come from several other websites and makes them searchable. Unsplash is a great resource but it’s a huge list of images and nothing is searchable. Luckily, you’ll find all Unsplash’s images in Pixabay, searchable! How cool is that?
Not only is the entire library of over 590,000 items to search, most of them are creative commons 0 licensed which means you can use them however you like. You’ll be free to tell your brand’s visual story at with less cost doing it.
Each image is labeled with the license, but I’ve only seen one image in my years of using the site that wasn’t able to be used commercially. That’s a good track record for free to use images.
Filter Your Search
I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually find what I’m looking for on the first search. Or worse, my results are dauntingly long.
It’s easy to filter your results before you search (as seen below) or after you’ve already searched with the toolbar above the search results. You can look specifically for illustrations that are horizontal and primarily have the color red in them.
Watch Out For
Most items are free for personal and commercial use, without attribution as mentioned above, but not all. Watch for the license type and be careful not to get in the habit of assuming everything is free for use in any way.
One Other Option
I use Pixabay almost every day and it’s my go-to place for free stock photos. Even if I’m willing to pay for an image, I visit Pixabay first just to check if there’s a free image available.
There are other options, though, and I even access Pixabay in the way I’m about to show you, which also gives me other options for free resources.
It’s the Creative Commons search.
You can type your search into the search box, select what type of license you need, and then select the service you’d like to search. You’ll notice Pixabay is selected on mine, that’s because it’s my most used resource.
Specialties
Sometimes you’re looking for something a bit out of the ordinary. Stock photos won’t cut it, especially free stock photos. By out of the ordinary I mean older pictures that are in the public domain. There are a lot of great resources for those and I urge you to look them up if you need something a bit more special.
There are cool places like the New York Public Library Digital Collection. Most of these resources have no restriction on their use, so you’re free to go crazy.
I have many of these special sites stockpiled so if you have any interest in them let me know, I’m willing to share I just don’t want to overwhelm.
Now What
You now have a great resource for finding free stock photos. Sometimes you can’t find what you’re looking for at no cost though. There are many other resources out there at very low cost so there’s no shortage of image resources on the Internet.
Don’t know what to do with all this information but want some great graphics to share on social media? Possibly you’re interested in making your brand more visual?
Let me help you figure things out so you can handle what you do best in your business.