Photos and images are protected by copyright. If you wish to use an image, you must get permission from the photographer or use another legal method. Using a royalty-free image is the simplest free alternative. Amazing stock image sites that give you such free images may be found online. You’ve undoubtedly heard of more popular ones like Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay. However, everyone goes there! If you want to stand out from the crowd, choose images from locations most people need to be aware of. So, let’s look at some lesser-known free stock image sites that are just as good as the popular ones.
Best Free Stock Image Sites
The best Free Stock Image Sites are listed here. So, let’s look at the list.
1. unDraw
Whether preparing a PowerPoint presentation or building a new app, a few good graphics can help spice things up. The most popular format for this is SVG or Scalable Vector Graphics. And unDraw is a site where you may find such free, hand-drawn images. All of the site’s graphics are free and do not demand attribution, so you may use them without providing any linkbacks or credits. Because each file is in SVG format, you may expand it to make it as large as you like, even large enough to print billboards. Furthermore, SVG adjusts the color palette, allowing you to change the colors to your preference. Alternatively, please choose a color, and unDraw will display images that match it. UnDraw is an astonishingly good site for the quantity of free clean illustrations it provides. It’s better than some of the high-quality vector art sites you may be familiar with. Designers and app developers will particularly like them since they may be used as a template to build something spectacular.
2. Nappy
When it comes to stock photos, Nappy provides some much-needed variety. Here you’ll find many stunning images featuring black or brown models. It’s worth mentioning that other sites feature stock photos of black and brown people, so Nappy isn’t your only choice. It is, nonetheless, one of your better selections in this category.
3. Moose
Typically, stock photography consists of clichéd images or amateur photography. Moose, on the other hand, takes a different strategy, working with experts in both photography and modeling. The goal of Moose is to make stock photo sets that may be used together. As a result, you’ll often find multiple pictures with a similar backdrop or the same model in different locations, etc. The lighting is also maintained as consistent as possible so that you may Photoshop two pictures into one without it being strange. You may sort Moose at any time by the category of images, the models, or the photographers. All pictures are free to use as long as you link back to Moose with credit, or you may purchase the picture without linking or attribution.
4. Reshot
Reshot provides attractive icons and images that you can use for personal and commercial projects without credit. In addition to the standard PNG file, you may obtain scalable vectors in SVG and EPS formats. The quality of these vectors is excellent, and there is a good selection to pick from. Reshot’s liberal license strategy will appeal to the app and web developers. Reshot is one of the best stock image sites to download free SVG icons.
5. Clipstill
Cinemagraphs are images that show a tiny portion of a scene in motion. It’s a visually gorgeous finished effect, with just enough motion to bring the photo to life. Cinemagraphs are a unique way to use animated GIFs, and you can now download a handful for free. Clipstill features a separate area for free stock cinemagraphs. It’s usually a good idea to save them for later use since the site’s content will change over time. Its content, however, is restricted. So here’s another obscure site with ten more royalty-free, attribution-free stock cinemagraphs. Over at Free Cinemagraphs, the creators took free stock footage and transformed it into cinematographic GIFs.
6. Librestock
Many popular stock photography sites are aggregators. For example, Pixabay and Pexels have a lot of photos from other places. So, in Librestock, we now have a “super-aggregator” that searches across multiple of these existing aggregators. Stocksnap, Negative Space, Picography, ISO Republic, Gratisography, Shotstash, Pexels, and Foodie Factor are all searched by Librestock. The thumbnails are large enough to provide a good look at the image before you go to the host site, saving you a few clicks. The site also features a section called Librestock Video for video search to assist you in finding high-quality, copyright-free stock footage by scanning the top sites specializing in movies rather than images.
7. Startup Stock Photos
SSP caters to a very specialized market, a working environment, or an area where office work is done. On SSP, you’ll find many stock photos of office environments and people dressed nicely and working at their desks. Aside from that, SSP offers a good selection of stock images for cell phones, laptops, and desktop workstations. There are also some photographs of workplace stationery.
The Bottom Line:
Make sure you understand what is permitted and what is banned in terms of use before using the images from these stock image sites. Generally, an image with a CC0 license may be used everywhere, although some sites have unique licensing that is worth researching before using an image. Some of them even have various licenses for each image, so make sure to look them over. If you need help finding what you’re searching for, we’ve compiled a list of the greatest stock image sites with high-resolution images.
