Free images for web projects

zoom lens of camera

Alternatively you could take the pictures yourself ...

Finding the right picture for a particular project can be a pain when you have a limited budget available. Luckily, there are plenty of places on the web to find images which are available for free use. Most “free” images still have some sort of conditions attached to usage, so always check the terms associated with an individual picture before you publish it. Below is a list I’ve compiled of useful free image sites with some brief comments on each, so that you can get an idea of what they cover.

Easy Stock Photos
Public domain pictures in loads of categories. Subjects you may not find elsewhere include Attractions, Education, Events, Music and Tools & Machinery. Not as many pictures under each category as elsewhere, but generally good quality.

EveryStockPhoto.com
Search engine for stock photos over multiple collections. Registration is required and photos found will have individual licenses for use which you need to ensure you comply with. The “featured searches” section on the front page gives you a good idea of the search index’s depth.

Finally Creative
Public domain image gallery. Large number of nature pictures.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Good general selection, especially strong on UK-specific images.

Free Pictures
Extensive collection of animal pictures.

FreeImages.com
Nice selection of topics covered, especially strong on animals and travel.

free-images.org.uk
The usual section types, plus specialities including useful Christmas and Halloween sections, images of gemstones and hearts and a whole section on Bruges!

FreeImages.co.uk
Wide range of nicely categorised images. Good selection of backdrop images. Home, office, sports, seasonal, technology & transport, objects and nature are among the categories, with good numbers of images in each. Requires registration to see all pictures.

Freephotos.lu
‘Repository for free public domain photos’. Decent variety on offer. The selection of background images could be particularly useful.

Gimp Savvy
Lots of nature and space pictures.

Image*After
“Large online free photo collection”. Great for textures, as well as including a full range of other topics.

MorgueFile
“Public image reference archive” which “contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use”. Great selection, well organised into sections.

Photogen
Some nice photos with UK locations and transport well covered and a good range of objects, abstract & concept images and backgrounds & textures. Registration required to download images.

Public-domain-photos.com
Good selection, especially strong on USA location travel photos.

PublicDomainPictures.net
Royalty-free stock photos on a full range of categories. The “light effects” category has some nice ideas.

Stockvault
Large site – includes good balance of nature and industrial images & selections of textures and 3D renders.

Stock.XCHNG
Huge gallery of images. Requires registration.

Uncle Sam’s Photos
“A directory of the U.S. government’s free stock photo sites.” Lots of useful stuff on the environment, science, transportation, health and people. American history too.

Webcreationz
Free image gallery with some striking photos.

Wikimedia has a fantastic directory which has to be the list of free image resources currently available. Its designed to help people avoid naughtily posting copyrighted images on Wikipedia but is enormously helpful whatever your need for free pictures is. Another useful resource hosted on the Wikimedia toolserver is FIST – the Free Image Search Tool. Wikimedia Commons also has an enormous collection of freely usable media files.

Finally, you can search on Google or Flickr for free images. In Google, use advanced search and look for creative commons pictures by selecting “free to use, share or modify, even commercially” under Usage Rights. Flickr has a special section for pictures with a Creative Commons license.

   
http://qwertyphilia.com/tag/photography/
qwertyphilia.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-13
21294
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:HDC347GY3F3BODYHAJPSANKPB2SPQ7VQ
<urn:uuid:6d63a3a6-1eea-4a8e-a56f-0a9c0840965e>
2017-03-28T21:39:06Z
91.146.108.3
sha1:QFHJ3B76WI2O5CRDYI3LAIWTP3A2EUEC
<urn:uuid:19f1c927-155d-40f1-a7ac-51b229fb5d95>
http://qwertyphilia.com/tag/photography/
length
response
<urn:uuid:507e0a01-dfbd-4b35-831a-387366188c13>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-13
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for March 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf