Tuesday, December 21, 2010

25 Royalty free stock image sites - Free royalty - Free images - Free Stock images Sites

These sites offer free royalty-free images. Know about this best 25 Free royalty free stock images Sites. Note the conditions of use for each site.
My favorite site for free stock photography is Stock.XCHNG. Searching and browsing is a breeze, and they even include a lightbox, which is a handy way to save images for later use.


This is a huge resource, currently indexing over 3 million photos! Every Stock images is a search engine for free photos, and it searches many of the sites listed here. Search options allow you to specify license type. Highly recommended.

Free to use the photos on Imagebase, and are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Images are available in two high resolution (1600 x 1200 or 3072×2048) formats.

Free source for stock photos Morguefile is a completely . Check the FAQ for usage. The term “morgue file” is used by illustrators and others for a stockpile of images used for reference material. Nothing ghoulish about it!

Free photos by Open photo groups their completely categories and offers a search function as well. Registration is only necessary if you’d like to upload photos.
Royalty free stock image sites

Nicely categorized Photo Rack has a huge collection of over 27,000  stock images. The categories are broken down into subcategories, but there is no search function. This is a place to browse, seeking that perfect image. No registration required. No ability to upload, but downloading is a breeze.

Stockvault is a very classy, modern site with thousands of images and some Photoshop tutorials. Membership is free and unlocks some additional features, such as a lightbox. Definitely worth a look.
 
Rather than category Unprofound is unusual in that images are grouped by color. There is also a search function. Registration is not necessary, but allows you to create a free online portfolio, and to contribute to the ever-growing collection.

Best Photo Rogue offers something unique: they take online requests for particular images. Their crew of photographers will actually go out and take your photo for you, for free. Not all requests are filled, but wow! What a concept!

Freerange requires registration before you can download. While there are no categories for browsing, there is a search function. They also invite you to make requests, as they have many images that aren’t online yet.

Geek Philosopher has many categories and all the free images are. There’s no registration. They request that you list a photo credit if you use a photo, but otherwise, there’s little restriction. In addition to photos, they offer backgrounds and wallpaper.

Cepolina is an international site, with photo descriptions in 17 languages, and the ability to browse photos using maps of the world, including specific European countries. You can also browse by category, and use a search function.

This site requires registration in order to enter the site, but once you’re in, you can upload or download, and participate in the forum, all for free. This is a very community-oriented site. Free images are grouped by category but there is no photo search function, that I could see. The forum software is a limitation here.

Woophy takes Cepolina’s map concept one step further: the home page is a giant map of the world! Every dot on the map represents photos taken at that location. This is a community for travel photographers, sharing their images with the world. Definitely worth a visit.



Freepixels has corporate-type images usually only found on pay-per-free stock image sites. It has a search function, categories, and a tag cloud, so finding an image is easy. There are also some good abstract backgrounds here.
Design Packs is a small but nice collection of free stock images, grouped into “packs” of 15 images. The images in each pack follow a common theme, such as Money, Flowers, or Lights. These images should appeal to designers and others looking for “abstract” images for backgrounds. Downloading 15 images as a zip file is a great time-saver.
 
Freefoto is made up of 117600 images with 153 sections organized into 3285 categories. There’s a search function, and usage is unrestricted. Just include an attribution link back to Freefoto.
 
Imageafter has 20,000 images available. There are two drop-downs (one for textures, one for images) that make it easy to browse the categories for each. Imageafter allows you to use their images on printed material for resale.
Pixel Perfect Digital has a small but growing collection of images. Registration allows you to upload to your own personal gallery. The search function allows you to search within one or more category.
Free Stock Photos is a small site containing good quality photographs in both low and high resolution versions. Photos are grouped into categories. The search function uses Google, which doesn’t work well for images here.
Free Digital Photos has a lot to offer, including a good search function, which is important when you’ve got this many images. Photos are grouped nicely into categories for easy browsing. Linkbacks are requested.

Public Domain Photos is just that: photographs in the public domain, arranged by category. There’s a good search function, as well. Includes a clip art section, as a bonus.

Nations Illustrated showcases pictures from around the world with over 7,000 photos in its collection. Browse by city, or country, or continent. Good search function, and a site-wide index.
Free Historical Stock Photos has lots of historical images, including many by Matthew Brady (Civil War) and Dorothea Lange (Great Depression). Includes paintings and vintage posters. Categorized, with a search function. Got retro?
Kave Wall is a great source of professional-quality close-up and macro photography. Need a great shot of paper clips or rubber bands? This is the place. Categorized and easy to browse. Not a lot here, but what’s here is first rate.

3 comments:

  1. My Stock Photos
    Finding high-quality, free to use images is a major battle every blog writer fights. Great imagery is a crucial piece of a great blog article. The next entry on our list of the best blogging tools – My Stock Photos – helps you do just that – find amazing, high-quality stock images. Free of charge.
    You really can’t beat free. Just don’t go overboard on adding tons of random pictures to your posts now that you have access to them. Make sure they’re all relevant and add value.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My Stock Photos
    Finding high-quality, free to use images is a major battle every blog writer fights. Great imagery is a crucial piece of a great blog article. The next entry on our list of the best blogging tools – My Stock Photos – helps you do just that – find amazing, high-quality stock images. Free of charge.
    You really can’t beat free. Just don’t go overboard on adding tons of random pictures to your posts now that you have access to them. Make sure they’re all relevant and add value.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My Stock Photos
    Finding high-quality, free to use images is a major battle every blog writer fights. Great imagery is a crucial piece of a great blog article. The next entry on our list of the best blogging tools – My Stock Photos – helps you do just that – find amazing, high-quality stock images. Free of charge.
    You really can’t beat free. Just don’t go overboard on adding tons of random pictures to your posts now that you have access to them. Make sure they’re all relevant and add value.

    ReplyDelete