Paid photo stocks. For those who need something exclusive

Find free pictures for commercial placement on the site or for your next giveaway promotion may not be so easy. Just by searching for “free photo hosting sites” or “free stock images”, you will most likely find only a lot of sites disguised as photo hosting sites that require payment for each downloaded image. But we have done all the dirty work for you, compiling a list of 20 resources where you can download free images that are subject to a Creative Commons Zero license, etc. This means that you can copy, transform and use any photo, even for commercial purposes, without obtaining permission or attribution.

FREE IMAGES FOR COMMERCIAL USE

All the sites listed below have links to the terms of cooperation and licenses used. We purposefully selected sites whose images are subject to a Creative Commons Zero or similar license. That is, the images can also be used for commercial purposes. But, nevertheless, we recommend that you re-read the conditions under which the images are provided, because they may change subsequently. Please keep in mind that we recommend checking the license terms of a new image before using it.

1. Unsplash
Why it's interesting: 10 images are added to the site every 10 days.

2. Realistic Shots
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it’s interesting: 7 new photos are uploaded to the site every week.

3. Pixabay
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it’s interesting: more than 320 thousand free images are available on the site, vector images and artistic works.

4. Life of Pix
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it’s interesting: all images are divided into categories.

5.Gratisography
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
What's interesting: all images in high resolution and with high contrast. New pictures are added every week.

6. Free Nature Stock
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it’s interesting: the site contains only photographs of nature, and it is updated every day.

7. Magdeleine
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it’s interesting: the site distributes pictures by color and tags, and is updated daily.

8. Snapwire Snaps
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it’s interesting: every 7 days, 7 carefully selected images are uploaded to the site, and all this is completely free.

9.Stocksnap
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it’s interesting: very convenient search through hundreds of high-resolution images. The site is updated every week.

10. Kaboompics
License: Images may be used for any purpose.
Why it’s interesting: the site has a search by category, new pictures are uploaded once a week.

11. Public Domain Archive
License: All images are in the public domain.
Why it’s interesting: the site has everything you need to create creative projects, it is updated weekly.

12. Travel Coffee Book
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it's interesting: every 10 days, 10 new travel-related images are added to the site.

13. ISO Republic
License: Images may be used for almost any commercial project.
What's interesting: free photos in high quality, which are suitable for any of your creative projects.

14. Foodie's Feed
License: You can use the images for commercial purposes, convert them and edit them for free.
Why it's interesting: Free high-resolution food images. What could be better? Minus: brutal hunger will awaken in you.

15. FuriousCamera
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it's interesting: free images of various moments from life, available for commercial use.

16. MMT
License: Allows you to convert and edit images.
Why it's interesting: the site contains many photographs of nature and city landscapes, and new images appear every week.

Such services originated in the 60s of the last century.

Employees of print publications constantly needed photos for reporting, and it was expensive to purchase exclusive material or employ full-time photographers.

Purchasing amateur works was a very radical decision, which automatically solved several issues at a time.

Now everyone can download a photo from a stock photo. Fortunately, the advent of the Internet has significantly influenced the industry.

Operating principle

Photostock is an online platform where you can download photos from a photo bank.

Despite the fact that most of these resources distribute paid content, there are also free stocks and banks.

On the Internet you can find several dozen “banks” of this kind, and also select for yourself several really interesting works, where you can feel, if not professionalism, then a strong craving for art.

It’s difficult to say which resource can be “dubbed” the best, but it wouldn’t hurt to consider a few interesting candidates.

The best free photo banks and photo stocks

Unsplash

Let's start with Unsplash. The site interface is very convenient, unobtrusive and at the same time ergonomic.

The home page contains the most interesting works, which were popular with downloaders throughout the week.

Advice! If you do not want to scroll through the entire list of images, just click on the magnifying glass or select a category. This will significantly “narrow” the range of the material you are looking for.

Dreamtime

If you're looking for free stock photos in Russian, you've come to the right place. This resource supports many languages, including ours.

Paid and free work from beginners/amateurs/little-known professionals.

All navigation also comes down to a simple and accessible search, as well as a choice among popular works. To download anything, you will have to register.

Picjumbo

A completely free resource for those who prefer free photo stocks without registration. The interface is English, but it’s very easy to find what you need.

Use what you like best.

It even has its own plugin for Photoshop.

DesignersPics

Good storage, providing content that can be “painlessly” used for both personal and global purposes.

The controls are extremely easy to learn.

Despite the English interface, you can easily find something useful and interesting. All works are protected by copyright, so there is no doubt about its legality.

Free Digital Photos

Despite the name, which hints at gratuitousness, the content on this site will require you to fork out some cash.

On the other hand, you receive exclusive material that has excellent quality and resolution.

Small photos of 400 px in size can be downloaded for free. Such materials are useful, for example, for writing notes in a newspaper or blog.

New Old Stock

Dedicated to all lovers of vintage, retro and “that era”.

Here you can find both rare images and artificially aged modernity, on which professionals in Photoshop did an excellent job.

If you wish, you can find a thematic photograph that personifies the era of the 20s or 40s of the XX century.

An excellent nostalgic photo bank, and it’s free. There is integration with Tumblr.

Travel Coffee Book

A unique resource in which you can find any pictures of the sights of almost every state. All photos are free to download.

Typically, the archive is hosted on OneDrive.

To download any photo, you must click on “Download” under the photo, and then click on cloud storage from Microsoft.

Made specifically, but does not require any royalties when used.

IM Free

Judging by the amount of content, the resource has only recently begun to operate at full capacity.

However, the presence of photos in the “bank” indicates that the site is constantly being updated and improved.

What’s noteworthy is that it is possible to make your own buttons, albeit simple ones.

The final “designer” can be downloaded as an image or as a CSS file for placement on your website or blog.

ISO Republic

Here you will find any project that will fit perfectly into almost any picture, be it a blog, LJ, your own portal or the same magazine/newspaper/periodical.

Search is easy, the number of categories is extensive, the amount of content is several million images from a wide variety of photography enthusiasts from all over the world.

It is extremely difficult to find at least one unprofessional job here. Each one deserves attention.

Pixabay

A Russian photo bank that stores both raster and vector images, which can be saved to your PC completely free of charge for further manipulation.

When you select one photo, you will be offered a list of works with similar tags and focus, so finding something will not be a hassle.

The list of content is updated every day, so don’t hang your nose if you can’t find something right away. Perhaps today is not your day.

Stockvault

From a set of icons to sources in RAW format.

All this can be found in this photo storage. The assortment does not offer a huge variety, but the photos that were approved by the administration “personify” professionalism.

There is no place for the mediocre selfies that social networks are teeming with.

For those who are “friendly” with Photoshop, there is a wide collection of 3D renders for every taste.

Gratisography

If you're looking for a source of unique clipart that represents extreme emotionality, then you've come to the right place. Not only standard categories are presented here.

In a wide assortment you will also find works that do not carry a semantic load, but are quite creative.

Photographs remain an integral part of the design. After spending a lot of time selecting high-quality illustrations that reflect the main idea of the project, you may find that they are very expensive. Fortunately, free photo banks—websites with stock photos—have appeared long ago and continue to develop. The pictures in their database are categorized and free of copyright restrictions, they can even be used for commercial purposes. Anyone who from time to time has to select illustrations for designing projects is familiar with such services.

Review of 30 photo stocks with free photos, vectors and videos

1. allthefreestock.com - brings together many stocks

Project by SEO consultant Seijo George. Using iframes, Allthefreestock broadcasts content from popular photo banks and other content sites. This way, links to illustrations, mockups, fonts, and patterns are available in one place. The service allows you to speed up the search for the desired content by narrowing the list of suitable web resources.

2.

A free photo bank containing 40,000 high-resolution illustrations. All photos are licensed under Creative Commons Zero, which means they can be copied, distributed, edited, and even used on commercial websites.

3.

A large-scale creative community that will be of interest to those who are interested in where to get photos and videos without paying for their use. The site content is licensed under CC0. Pixabay has been translated into Russian and is also available as a mobile application.

4.

A portal with free images created by a photographer and designer. The stock rejected the photos he took, citing the insufficient resolution of the images as the reason. Over the 2 years of the project’s existence, users downloaded more than 2.5 million photos from the site. At several rates paid subscription premium content of the portal is available.

5.

Algorithm-driven search engine for free and paid stock images artificial intelligence in beta. Visitors to this site from convenient search can also check the quality of any photo via neural network by uploading it to the site or providing a link.

6.

Photo bank with HD quality videos and images, free to use. The portal’s slogan is “Give life to your photos!” The service regularly accepts photos from users and awards the title “Photographer of the Week.” On the site you can create a profile with a portfolio and subscribe to other photographers.

7.

A good stock photo created by a photographer who wanted to share his work with others. The only action prohibited by the stokpic license is the resale of photos in unchanged form. By subscribing to the newsletter, you can receive 10 Premium images every 2 weeks.

8.

Base free photos, aimed at people of creative specialties. Since its launch, the site has published 3,000 images under a CC0 license, and the database continues to be updated weekly. By becoming email subscribers of the site, community members receive a newsletter of fresh photos.

9.

A web resource that offers search and downloading of stock photos. The main interface of the portal has been translated into Russian, the photo bank is free. Freephotos works with API third party sources content, making images available for download on one site.

10.burst.shopify.com

Free photo bank running on the Shopify platform. The goal of the project is to support designers, developers, entrepreneurs and bloggers in creating quality websites and marketing campaigns. All photos are recommended for commercial use.

underground

11.

A photo bank with over 300 thousand free photos, generously donated by the community of photographers. The portal’s specialists compile a selection of photos every day, and the site also has a search for specific queries. You can track the work of photographers by subscribing to them.

The project bears the name of the photographer who founded it. The site content is available for downloading without registration. A great source of beautiful photos of various subjects, licensed under CC0.

13.

One of the top stock content resources, providing thousands of free photos to users for three years. The project also gladly accepts high-quality works for placement in its library.

14.

A photo blog that publishes a daily “photo of the day” selected by editors. Archived posts form an extensive database with search by category and dominant colors in the image.

15. splitshire.com/topbestphotos

Popular photo bank with beautiful photos and video, the main content of which is free. A selection of top photos is posted on the main page of the site. The service offers to download individual photos for free or help the project by paying for downloading an archive of 500+ photos.

16.

This photo bank differs from others in the presence of non-standard content, which often does not fit into the concept of aesthetic. If you need a photo of a person dressed in an Easter bunny costume in the middle of the desert, this web resource is for you.

17. cupcake.nilssonlee.se

Free stock photo in blog format, its author is Swedish photographer Jonas Wimmerström. HD quality photographs posted on the blog form a voluminous portfolio, divided into categories.

18.

Stock repository of free photos intended for public use. IN present moment The library contains 400 thousand images and continues to be updated with new ones.

Photo banks by category:

19. travelcoffeebook.com - travel

20. photos.bucketlistly.com - selection by country

A collection of 5000+ geo-tagged travel photos. Thus, the site allows you to search for photos by the countries in which they were taken. When entering the site, auto-location is triggered, and the user sees a selection of photographs taken in his country.

21. - photo of food

22. - photo of food

A project of food photographers who are interested in transforming the Internet space with food content. Thanks to this photo bank, it has become easier for gourmets to find high-quality free images for a website about food.

23. superfamous.com/Images - nature

An online collection of free photos depicting natural phenomena and macro textures of natural elements. The site is designed in minimalist style, his home page is a tile of photographs.

24. - still nature

A blog dedicated to life and work, including a gallery with HD photos of nature. The founder of the blog is American photographer, designer and developer Adrian Pelletier. Under a CC0 license, he shares the photos he takes.

25. nos.twnsnd.co - old photos

A web resource that regularly publishes old free photographs collected from publicly available sources. All images are free of copyright restrictions. Photo stock is ideal for those who require a retro style design.

Free vector images:

26.

Volumetric royalty free photo bank vector graphics, which has accumulated over 8 million images. Start page The service displays pictures on current topics, for example, “ New Year" Thousands of pictures are added to the site every day.

27.

The largest vector graphics community in the world. By joining it, you no longer have to wonder where to get pictures from vector format free for the site. Photobank allows even unregistered users to download images. Registered community members have the right to discuss the submitted works.

Free videos for websites and video background:

28.

Stock portal where they are available for download free videos HD videos. The CC BY 3.0 license allows their use in commercial projects. By downloading a video, you get zip file, containing video in .mp4 and .webm formats. Videobank accepts requests to add videos on a specific topic.

29.

A library of photographs and videos added by enthusiastic photographers and cameramen. The system uses integration with twitter account to provide the ability to add videos to favorites and repost on social networks. Users return to the site to borrow free videos to design their project.

30. splitshire.com/category/video-2

One of the sections of the Split Shire stock already mentioned above is entirely dedicated to video clips. They can be used both as a supplement to the text and as a background screensaver. All videos are tagged, which makes it much easier to find content of the desired category.

Can you spare 5 more minutes to educate yourself? I advise you to read the template for subscription

Surely, many in their work have encountered a lack of high-quality photographs or their absence at all. Now these problems can be easily solved, since photographs are used for making brochures, magazines, newspapers, books, website design, etc. for just a few dollars legally buy on the Internet on microstock photo banks (and by subscription from 15 cents per image). By the way, the advantages compared to ordering a photographer are obvious. In particular, buying photos from these photo stocks will cost many times less. In addition, the selection of images is quite huge. Each modern photo bank has more than 50 million high-resolution images (on average from 4 to 20 megapixels). And the quality of the photo can be much better than what your photographer would have taken.

Images are sold under a Royalty free license and, depending on size, cost from one to several dollars. This license allows you absolutely legal Use the purchased photo or vector illustration an infinite number of times in a variety of projects. A limitation may be a very large circulation (on average more than 200,000) or the use of a photograph as a product.

To make a purchase, you must first register on a microstock, and then transfer money there, that is, “buy credits.” They are accepted in the most common way through a credit card or PayPal, and some through Webmoney. The minimum loan amount in photo banks varies, on average it is $10. After purchasing credits, you will be able to download photos in any size you need.

The best photo banks for piece by piece shopping images:

Depositphotos.com (minimum payment $34 for 30 credits). Purchase options: by bank card, PayPal, Skrill, Webmoney, via Yandex.money, bank transfer.
Dreamstime.com (minimum payment $15 for 11 credits)(purchase example). For all registered users, this photo bank gives the opportunity to use their Free Stock Images and Photos section.
bigstockphoto.com (minimum payment $35 for 10 credits).
lori.ru - Russian photo bank, best option when you need to process the purchase of images through accounting. Read more about Lori's photo bank.

By the way, the more credits you purchase at one time, the cheaper the cost of one photo ends up being.

The best photo banks for wholesale purchases:

If you constantly needed large number new images(for example, for newspapers, magazines or news sites), it is very profitable to use a purchase from photo banks by subscription. This option is also suitable for creating an initial archive of photographs or vector illustrations for your work.

The leaders among photo banks by subscription are www.depositphotos.com and www.shutterstock.com. For example, there are more than 50 million images in the shutterstock database. It offers $249 per month to download 25 photos or illustrations per day (750 images per month). In total, one photo will cost the buyer about 30 cents. If you subscribe for a longer period, the final price of the image will be even lower. Learn more about purchasing from Shutterstock.

The DepositPhotos photobank has even more great deals, there are more subscription options and lower prices. Its disadvantage, compared to Shutterstock, is that it has a slightly smaller image base. If you compare prices with the most popular tariff plan from Shutterstock, here you can download 30 images per day (about 900 pieces per month) for $219 per month. In total, one photo will cost about 24 cents.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. It's been a quarter of a century since we've been here, where you have to pay for everything. If in terms of material values this statement does not raise any special questions for us, then in terms of intellectual values everything is a little more complicated. Most of us understand that there is a law about it and its massive protection in court. However, to really start pay for something you can easily find and download in the vastness of the Internet, it’s not so easy psychologically.

Thus, the owners of many sites (or) are faced with a moral problem when searching and using photographs (or pictures, icons, icons) found on the Internet to design texts (as is known,). What to do? (close your eyes) or look for something in paid photo stocks or photo banks, temporarily strangling your “toad”?

Today I propose consider a compromise option, when the wolves are full and the sheep are safe. We will talk about free photo stocks and photo banks, where photos can be downloaded quite legally and use them on the website or in your information product without fear of consequences.

I repeat once again that this is a compromise option (the choice of photos is seriously limited, and it will be easier for someone to pay money on a paid photo stock than to delve into a free one), but nevertheless it provides a solution to the problem described above. Take a look and see if you like it...

8 best free photo banks

The problem with free photo stocks lies, as I already said, in the fact that by and large the choice there is not great. Yes, there are a lot of free photo banks themselves, but they are still not as full of photos as the paid Shatterstock and the like.

Let's go over list of photo banks and stocks, where you can legally get hold of free photos for your website (we’ll talk about icons and pictures below - for now the number is for photos):

Pexels — cool photos in a good and conveniently designed online service. Everything is very simple and concise. There is a search, tags, tops, etc. things. You can even upload your own photos. The image database is quite large with a decent coverage of topics. All photos are distributed under CC0 license (free use):
Photos can be downloaded without registration - just select the resolution you need:
StockSnap is another great source of free beauty. The photos collected there are distributed under the same license as in Pexels and do not require attribution. The service has the ability to sort images by date added, views, added to favorites, trends or by number of downloads. In general, it’s very convenient, in my not very discerning opinion:
Stockvault— a free photo stock with almost a hundred thousand photographs of various topics (really a lot) and other images distributed across free license(although for what reason it is not entirely clear). There is an advanced search with additional filtering tools, which is very convenient:
Pixabay- interface of one of the largest free photo stocks(and maybe the largest - about half a million files) supports the Russian language, which is good, because it is not necessary to enter queries in the search bar.
All photographs are covered by a Creative Commons CC0 license (can be posted without attribution), which is again good, and in addition to photographs, you can also find vector images, as well as videos distributed for free.
Freeimages- one of the largest free photo stocks (repositories) in the world (almost 400 thousand images). Fully supports the Russian language and has a sophisticated filtering system. True, you will have to register to download the photos you like, but it’s worth it.
Unsplash— if you need large, high-resolution photographs that are distributed free of charge (CC0 license), then this photo bank is your direct route. The format for presenting the photos is slightly different and you can just go in and admire the wonderful creations of various professional photographers. Here you can also find beautiful wallpaper for your desktop.
Morgue File— you will find several hundred thousand free photos in this stylish photo bank. Mention of the author is not required when using them.
Life of Pix— free photos from professional photographers (there is also a video stock, which is also free). In my opinion, in an attempt to create an original online service (and they succeeded), the authors of the project lost a little in speed (but it is possible that these are temporary problems). And everything is great - advanced search, categories, etc. Perhaps there are not too many photos on this stock.

10 free stock photos

There are dozens more small stocks and microstocks, which often represent the work of just one photographer or studio. However, this does not at all diminish the quality of the photographs presented there and the fact that it will be possible to obtain and use them for your own purposes for free:

6 More Sources of Free Stock Photos

Above I cited those photo banks with free images, which I use myself (and I tried to briefly describe them), but I also want to remind you (or “discover America”) that Google image search Among the many filtering tools, it also has one that helps to distinguish among the total found mass photographs distributed under a free license(“Tools” - “Use Rights”).

Found this way the photographs can be quite easily used on your website or in an information product (in accordance with the selected license type) without fear that someone will make a claim against you and force you to pay for copyright violations.

When installing such filters, Google most likely searches specifically in the databases of free photo banks and some services, where it is precisely indicated that the image belongs to free or paid content. What’s convenient here is that legally free photos are thus combined into one large common database.

Although it’s not a fact that there won’t be something on a free photo stock that Google doesn’t know about. After all, the photos may be closed from indexing or may have been added only recently. In general, Google Images is good option free receipt legal photographs, but far from the only and not exhaustive one.

In addition, there are sites specializing in stock searches, microstocks and other photo banks (including free ones). You have probably already encountered many of them, but I will still give examples:

Flickr- one of the most popular photo hosting sites in the world (even more so), owned by the slowly dying Yahoo. To ensure that only those photos that can be used for free for your own purposes are shown in search results, check the appropriate box in the search filter settings:
Photo Pin— search for photos distributed under a free Creative Commons license (mostly searched on Flickr). Very conveniently implemented. I recommend it.
Freepik is the largest search engine for free vector images (about 150 thousand in the database), pictures, PSD (more than 5 thousand), photographs (200 thousand pieces), icons and badges (about 100 thousand). It's nice that you can work with the service in Russian(including entering queries in your native language).
They make money on affiliate programs of paid stock photos, so pay attention to the distinction between search areas by paid and free photos, as well as other types of images.
LIFE photo archive hosted by Google- historical photographs (in fact, this is a kind of filter superimposed on top of Google Images), which can be used for free on your website. It goes without saying that if you need just such passages for design, then there are a dime a dozen of them and everything will be completely legal.
Dreamtime— search for free legal photos from photo banks. Again, the interface is in Russian, but, in my opinion, you will still have to search in English. In addition, you will have to register to download, which makes the process not so comfortable and carefree.
Wikimedia Commons- a very large database of photographs (more than 35 million), video and audio materials with the possibility of receiving and using them free of charge. It is essentially (I already wrote about this in the above article).
When downloading a photo or other media file, it will indicate whether you need to mention the author.
New Old Stock— retro (historical) photographs are freely available (take and use for your pleasure). A good addition to the above-mentioned Google LIFE.
IconFinder- if you are, then this service will provide you with an indispensable service.
Here you can find a lot of images on the topic you need ( various formats and sizes). Personally, I use it quite often and described it in detail in the article linked to it.

Free photos from paid stocks and photo banks

I don't mean any kind of unfair partnership. No, everything is according to the law. The fact is that paid photo stocks, in order to attract the attention of interested users, quite often, for example, give out a little paid photos for free if you subscribe to their subscription. I don’t know if all photo banks do this, but I will give an example of those who do this. In this simple way you can receive a dozen photos as a gift on an ongoing basis.

Let me just list the popular ones photo stocks that distribute photos by subscription:

Also from some paid photo stocks You are allowed to use photos for free, if they were inserted in the intended manner (usually either tags or ). In any case, this is possible with a paid version.

In conclusion, I would like to note that the decision to legalize graphic materials used on the site (or anywhere else) is up to you. There is a chance that no one will ever catch you in the act, but they might get caught. It will be difficult to get out then, because paid stocks have lawyers on staff who specialize in this very matter (this is their bread).

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

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