We’ve searched the everywhere for the best curators, collections and websites that stock high quality, free to use, royalty free images online.
Using creative commons, royalty free images shouldn’t mean having to sacrifice on quality, and in 2016 it doesn’t thanks to a growing number of generous photographers and awesome websites dedicated to providing stunning completely free to use photography. We’ve compiled a list of our favourite sources for hipster-friendly, trendy imagery that you can use attribution-free in your digital and web projects.
freeographs.com
Freeographs is a relative newcomer to the whole stock photography/royalty free image market, with a strong selection of essentials and expanding catalogue that serves as something of a ‘best of the rest’. It’s easy to use catalogue and tag features makes it easy to navigate tech, nature, business and people archives that serve up high quality images that are easy to download and perfect for pretty much any web or print project.
Like most of the sites we came across, all the photos hosted on Freeographs are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, this means that images are completely free to use for any legal purpose without credit or attribution.
unsplash.com
Unsplash is perhaps the most consistently high quality resource for creative commons photography on this list. It’s extensive catalog of beautiful imagery is searchable, easy to download and includes 10 new photos every 10 days that cover nature, animals, business and architecture.
All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash.
pexels.com
Just like Unsplash all photos on Pexels are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, this means the pictures are completely free to be used for any legal purpose. And similarly it’s catalog is extensive and wide-ranging. However there is a distinctly ‘stock’ feel to some of the imagery, which means that pexels is probably best-suited to users working on professional or corporate projects.
photocollections.io
Maybe not the largest resource on this list but it certainly holds it’s own when it comes to quality. It’s catalog is well organised, easy to navigate and consistently high-quality. And all of the images at photocollections are licensed under Public Domain, meaning that you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
superfamous.com
With relatively limited choice, no search function and images only available under the conditions of a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (which means that you can use the work for your own purposes as long as credit is provided) Superfamous perhaps isn’t as convenient as some of the other sites on this list. But it’s catalog consists of some incredible abstract, hipster-friendly nature and architecture photography, perfect for your aesthetically-concious web or print project.
startupstockphotos.com
If you’ve ever trawled Google images in search of “man drawing on white board” or “woman sitting at laptop with coffee” but only come up with low-quality amateur photography or sickly, whitewashed ‘stock’ images then startupstockphotos.com is heading straight into your bookmarks. The small business/start-up niche is covered extensively through their catalog of high-quality office-based photography, perfect for use in your professional yet trendy visual project.
All photos published there are licensed under Creative Commons Zero which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or startupstockphotos.com.
gratisography.com
A great all-rounder with a simple filterable catalog of high-quality images that look great. Despite being somewhat generic, the catalog includes a number of abstract visuals and digital edits, meaning with a quick search you can come up with something perfect for your mock-up, print, web or advertising project.
Pictures are offered under a Creative Commons Zero license. with the common sense differences/limitations that you can’t use any of the images for pornographic, criminal, defamatory or degrading purposes, likewise you can’t use or redistribute the images on any free stock photo websites or apps and you can’t sell and/or redistribute the pictures implying you’re the photographer.
