18 More Free Stock Photo Sites
May 11th, 2010 | Published in Featured, Resources | 22 Comments
Free stock photos are in demand, if our readers are any indication. Our article “25 Free Stock Photo Sites” has been read more than 360,000 times since it was published about two years ago.
Since then, we’ve received suggestions from readers for sites we missed in the first list (and some sites that didn’t exist two years ago). So it’s time for a second list, pushing the number of sites way past 25. Thanks to everyone who left an email or comment suggesting a site.
Caveats: Note the terms of use for each site. Some of these sites offer free images in addition to images for a fee. Keep in mind that “Royalty Free” does not mean the images are free; it means that you don’t need to pay the photographer a royalty each time you use the image. These sites offer free royalty-free images.
If your blog is news-related in any way, shape, or form, you need to check out Picapp. Let’s say you want to blog about last night’s Oscars. Picapp has red carpet photos, taken last night, that you can use on your blog now, free. I’m not making this up. The photo will appear on your blog with a wee bit of advertising, but still. For the news, sports, celebrity, travel, fashion, and entertainment blogger.
Freeimages offer more than 3000 medium-resolution stock photos in 75 galleries, as well as marketing tips, links, wallpapers, templates, and other goodies.
Budget Stock Photo has no photos of its own. Rather, it contains some rather long lists of other sites hosting free stock photos. You could spend days here, so grab some coffee (or tea) and hit the lists!
Photo Everywhere has free travel stock photos, especially from the UK, categorized by geographical region. Link back required.
Photoree strikes me as similar in style to Google Image search. Free registering seems necessary. Also, note this warning: “Avoid recommending photos containing nudity, if possible.” So, do try and restrain yourself.
Photogen has a nice search feature, based on tagged photos. Web usage is unrestricted, but free registration is required.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking at this point. “Thousands of free images. Is that the best you can do?” Well, how would you like to try MILLIONS?! Both Flickr and Wikimedia house a bazillion images that are under the Creative Commons license. For this, a large coffee urn will be required. Good luck. (Wikimedia’s CC image are here.)
This blog offers free texture images, and (this is cool) they encourage everyone to upload their own textures to share. What a great idea!
Free Stock Photos has over 10,000 free stock photos for download, nicely grouped into a bunch of categories.
Acobox is unique in that they host all of their photos for you, in different sizes. Just select your desired size and alignment, and Acobox delivers the HTML for you to add to your blog. No need to download. Pretty neat.
Wallpaper Stop has a lot of wallpapers. 12,000, give or take. And they are big and high def. Very nice. Sign up and get free wallpapers in your inbox once a week.
Free Digital Photos has a good idea: give away low-res versions of photos, and sell high-res versions for a few bucks. The low-res (640px) are perfect for a web page. And the photos? They are NICE. Check ‘em out.
Free Foto, like Free Digital Photos (above), offers low-res for free, and higher res for a price. But you’ll need to request the price, and wait for a reply. To download a freebie, you need to sign an agreement and give your email address. Every. Time. You. Download. But they do have over 130,000 photos…
The “pd” in PDPhoto stands for “public domain.” There’s not a vast number here, but they’re free…and if you need a pic of Kermit’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they’ve got you covered.
“All pictures on this site are explicitly placed in the public domain, free for any personal or commercial use.” And there’s some very nice photos here, hidden in among the Google ads. Worth a peek.
“HD jpeg files up to 3,000 pixels. Coming soon layered Photoshop files and Vector Art.” Some very nice, professional photos. Stunning, really. A nice portfolio site.
Many of the photos here look like print-quality commercial photographs–they’re that good. A jewel of a site.
Photl is very impressive. All the photos are free, and you can search for them by keyword combined with a color. Need a red dress? Type “dresses” and choose the color red from the picker. Bingo. When you go to download, they have a crop tool that allows you to download just a portion, if you like. Big files, high quality. Downloads limited to 35mb a day. I’m bookmarking this sucker.
RGBStock reminds me of my favorite pay-for-stock site, iStockphoto.com. Same nice pop-ups when you hover over an image, same clean design. Only difference is: RBGstock is free. Gotta love it.
May 12th, 2010 at 5:10 am (#)
Wow, the list just gets bigger and better, this is a great resource for anyone requiring free or low cost images.
Perhaps my site is a bit new to have made the list free stock photos which is a daily growing library of high quality stock images under a CC licence. I hope posting my link here is okay and if so, I hope you enjoy my images.
May 12th, 2010 at 9:58 am (#)
for image search registration is not necessary at Photoree.com
it’s very easy to use — thanks for the tip!
May 30th, 2010 at 11:29 am (#)
I would like to add tat http://www.rgbstock.com has more the 39,000 free stock photos online
jay´s last blog ..flower
May 30th, 2010 at 12:21 pm (#)
@Jay –
RGBStock.com is already on the list, at the bottom. Looks like a good source!
Thanks -
Bob
June 1st, 2010 at 7:57 am (#)
Has anyone ever used flowerbz5.com for celebrity stock photos (free) seems too good to be true – whats the con.
Can anyone recommend any other sites where you can get free celebrity pics – starting my own magazine!
Thanks
June 1st, 2010 at 10:06 am (#)
Rachel –
Try http://www.picapp.com. It’s a new entry to this list, just added it over the weekend (see top).
As for flowerbiz5, I can only guess. No idea where those photos come from or if they are legitimate. But Picappp is a great site, uses advertising on the stock to pay for itself. Would be a great source of photos for a newsmagazine, etc.
Bob
June 1st, 2010 at 2:44 pm (#)
Thanks Bob,
Shame it’s only for online blogs and websites- I need images for print
Great images though.
Cheers
June 7th, 2010 at 11:17 am (#)
Hi everyone.
We’ve just finished veezzle.com, a free stock photo search engine, currently crawling thousands of stock photos per hours.
It’s totally free, there is no registration required, even for commenting and rating, no premium whatsoever, ads-free and we’re open to any suggestion.
August 27th, 2010 at 10:56 pm (#)
Hello there!
I’d like to add another one to the list: Stock Royalty Free Photos
Stock Free Images´s last blog ..In House Special 1
September 1st, 2010 at 7:10 am (#)
It great cool , i just like flickr~ ,also wallpaperstop~
September 24th, 2010 at 6:38 pm (#)
This list is great. There are a lot of free sites out there, but this list covers some of the better quality images available. Hoping for another update to the list.
September 28th, 2010 at 5:28 pm (#)
Nice list, bokmarked! Another good resource: http://www.123rf.com/browsefreeimages.php
Check out their normal images as well. Come as cheap as $1 per image. Plenty of variety too. I use this for my blog, highly recommended.
November 10th, 2010 at 2:37 pm (#)
I would please ask you to review our new free photos site http://www.freestockphotos.es. We give away our whole collection for free at resolution of 640 pixels. Larger resolutions available for low budgets. No registrarion required.
November 11th, 2010 at 2:49 pm (#)
[...] http://www.digitalimagemagazine.com/blog/featured/18-more-free-stock-photo-sites/ [...]
January 1st, 2011 at 11:57 am (#)
People are also welcome to use the images on http://cjophoto.com/ for commercial and non-commercial use on websites and blogs.
January 7th, 2011 at 2:15 pm (#)
Hi. I wanted to suggest a good site:
http://www.freestockphotos.es
Nearly 100% of our Royalty Free photos are Free Download. Every image is absolutely free, with some more options to buy individual higher resolutions. They can be used either for private or commercial purposes. In exchange, we only ask you to use the images according to our Licensing. Thanks.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:23 am (#)
Don’t forget http://www.pixmac.com – they have a collection of 30,000 free images amongst 11 million photos. A read ‘hidden’ gem of a site – a newcomer but growing fast
January 20th, 2011 at 6:06 am (#)
Yes, it seems Pixmac has a lot of pics but they clearly make a difference between the free and payable pics. You soon discover the free pics are very low quality, while http://www.freestockphotos.es they make no difference in quality. They all seem quite good and are really FREE for a resolution up to 640 pixels, just an usable size for most blogs and posts, and you pay a low fee if you want it bigger. Again FreeStockPhotos.es seems more friendly to me as you do not need to register for free downloads or addtocart feature.
February 10th, 2011 at 12:01 pm (#)
Nice list. I am always on the lookout for freebies, widgets, fotos e.t.c.
I love the Jeyjoo Gallery http://jeyjoo.com/gallery
Why?
They add new images every day
They are absolutely free
They are very high quality
I also find that they are generic and can be used in a variety of projects.
Definitely add to your list
February 22nd, 2011 at 7:01 am (#)
Very nice list and I love the way you presented the info: straight and to the point.
Well done, my friend.
I would humbly suggest also this resource on free images:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/where_to_find_free_images_and_visuals
March 2nd, 2011 at 1:12 am (#)
[...] know if some may no longer exist. The article — 25 Free Stock Photo Sites — includes an update of 18 more from May 2010. Photos on some of these sites require attribution and others require payment, but [...]
March 13th, 2011 at 10:06 am (#)
You should also check out the new site of the stock.xchng founders: http://stockfresh.com
They also have some freebies all the time!