Will you prefer a 3000-word essay or a crisped-out version on an Infographic?
In this super-competitive world whatever speeds up the process is considered as an ideal choice. Hence, an Infographic.
Creative visuals are a treat for any user be it Photos, Videos, Graphics or any other kind of visual. Your work is half-done if you have an in-house repository of visual assets.
According to a survey by MIT neuroscientists, the brain can identify images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds and 90% of the information stored is in the form of visuals.
Whenever there is a requirement for images, the first thing a layman does is Google-search. Google is just an aggregator of all the pictures on the web with a matching meta description to your search keyword. These pictures can not be used for free because of their copyright license.
Therefore using lucrative visuals and high-quality stock images can be really helpful for your content to stand out. From businessmen suited up and shaking hands to exceptional pop-culture images and soothing landscapes, there are royalty-free photos of everything on these Free Stock Websites.
Not just pictures, but certain websites also provide Photoshop files and Illustrator vectors. Just punch in the specific keywords and the required design will be available at your fingertips.
These images are royalty-free but are licensed under Creative Commons. It is a non-profit organization that develops various licensing agreements for intellectual property that allow artists -including photographers and graphic designers — to make their work available for others to use, free of charge, but with specific terms and conditions of the agreement.
So, it is essential that you check your risk-free or royalty-free images wisely. Without any further discussion, let’s hop on to the list of websites where you can find high definition stock images ASAP!
Unsplash
Unsplash offers a wide variety of free high-resolution images. It grants you an irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide copyright license to download, copy, modify, distribute, perform, and use photos from Unsplash for free.
A stock-library created by 1,50,000+ photographers and creators; these pictures can be used for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the photographer or Unsplash.
However, this license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate or compete for any service. These crowdsourced images are artsy, modern and lined with the latest trends.
Gratisography
Gratisography was founded and created by Ryan McGuire, a designer and artist. It is a site which offers quirky and unique high-resolution images personally captured by the founder himself.
His collection of images is less “stocky” from the typical commercial photos, and would perfectly fit in the visuals of your aesthetic Instagram feed.
Even though the collection is comparatively less at present, but it’s intimate and visually appealing aura makes Ryan’s work stand apart.
The images are free to download, but the catch here is a custom license which limits its sensitive and defamatory use limitations. Site expressly says they recommend “due diligence” before using these photos in commercial projects.
Stockvault
With more than 1,33,000 free stock photos with hundreds of new images added every week, Stockvault is a free stock-image website for people who don’t have resources to invest in royalty-free images.
The contributors have to select from the three licenses offered by the domain owners. These licenses are:
- Commercial license — Free usage for commercial, personal and educational purposes.
- Non-commercial license — Free usage for non-commercial,personal and editorial use only.
- Creative Commons Zero (CC0)
Stockvault has a well-curated collection of free stock images, but their owner only reviews technicality of the images and not their legal status. So when you use these images for commercial purposes, make sure you have the proper license.
Pexels
Standing by their motto of Empowering Creators, Pexels is moderated by Bruno Joseph, Ingo Joseph, and Daniel Frese. Co-founded by Bruno and Ingo in 2014, Daniel later joined them in 2015.
With its captivating user-interface, easy to search filters and high-quality free stock images under creative commons zero licenses, Pexels is one of the most-loved websites. From soothing landscapes to different textures, they’ve got it all.
The site incorporates an aggregate of millions of free stock images from various contributors and also from different paid agencies. Pexels also provide quality free stock-videos, and this makes it numero uno of free stock-image websites.
Picjumbo
Created by an ultra-talented stock photographer and designer Viktor Hanacek, Picjumbo was his last resort when all other sites refused to take his work. Therefore, he created his own website, which now hosts more than 2000 high-quality stock images curated personally by Viktor.
These are commercial ready images, created for the sole purpose of stock imagery. People in all his images are unrecognizable, yet are still present.
However, you can always trust a stock photographer for best free-stock images licensed under Creative Commons Zero.
Morguefile
A site named after popular newspaper industry term used to describe the file which holds past issues — A morgue file is a place to keep post-production materials for the use of reference — an inactive job file.
As the name depicts, Morguefile exists since 1996 and provides quality images since back then. It is a website that allows you to download free images curated by a community of creators and various other ivy-league stock websites. If you fail to find any picture according to your relevance, you can also raise a request for that particular image.
Offering free stock images which can be used for both commercial or personal use, Morguefile can be your source of umpteen stock-images.
Pixabay
Pixabay offers over 1 million+ high-quality royalty-free stock images and videos.
In May 2019, Pixabay was acquired by an online design platform Canva for their vibrant collection of Stock Images. They use custom made Pixabay License to download images, this falls under Creative Commons Zero in which no artist attribution is required.
Even though a large chunk of content is crowdsourced, the images on Pixabay are compiled by a professional creative head (Photographer and Editor). They have specific guidelines which are strictly followed for the Image submission.
Pikwizard
Operated by a premium content curating agency Wavebreak Media Ltd, Pikwizard offers a balanced mix of artistic and commercial style free-stock images.
They have an additional feature called DesignWizard, which allows the user to edit these images online and download for free. They have an archive of more than thousands of modern stock-images which are contributed by various stock-photographers across the globe.
Pikwizad covers all the popular categories of stock images with their modern and trendy approach. They use their own custom license, which doesn’t allow the use of these high-quality images for resale or products which involve resale.
Reshot
Reshot is a free-stock image platform which works with a mission. Their motto is to make a community of creative creators via a free exchange of the world’s best visual content.
Their stock images are influenced by the free-spirit of their contributors, which is vivid, unique, extensive.
Life of Pix
Life of Pix is a brainchild of Canadian Creative Agency LEEROY. It is a stock-Image website which puts up news images every day contributed from its huge network of photographers. Life of Pix carters aesthetically artsy pictures for creative use, and they have a very edgy website which will definitely grab your attention.
Life of Pix also offers free stock-videos, clips, and loops under its peer domain — Life of Vids.
It has high-quality pictures listed under Public Domain. Hence there is no copyright risk incorporated in commercial or personal use of their images. While there is no limitation on downloads from the end-user, Life of Pix allows distribution of only 10 pictures. Higher volumes require written consent from their team.
It is also affiliated with Adobe Stock.
Negative Space
Part of the picture which is in focus is technically termed as Positive Space, and the blurred part is called Negative Space. The negative space complements to the beauty of positive space.
Justifying their name, this free stock-image website serves the purpose of bringing local photographers and their high-quality in focus by providing a negative space.
With a wide range of available free-stock images, negative space uploads new photos every week.
The contributors have to go through a detailed screening process to get their work accepted, this, in turn, assures quality content by Negative Space. They follow Creative Commons Zero license policy — this involves free usage for commercial purpose.
StockSnap.io
StockSnap is home to the most eye-catching and fine-detailed images on the web, and they offer everything for absolutely free. No copyrights and no attribution required, you can use the image wherever you want.
They have a rich bank of trendy modern images, which can be perfect for you blogs, social media or advertisements. If you have specific requirements of colour, angle or lighting; this is the website where you can look out for your perfect stock-image.
What are you waiting for?
Now you have a list of all the places where you can find the perfect creative for free. After this huge list, we can assure you that your perfect picture is right around the corner. Now you don’t have to restrict creativity because of limited resources, just browse it to get it done.
These websites are a valuable resort to all the designers, marketers, bloggers or anyone who wants to step away from cheesy stock images and try out something new. Just keep in mind that you use correct license so you don’t end up in any trouble.
Do you know any other website that we missed out, let us know in the comments below
Originally published at https://recurpost.com on August 22, 2019.
