Have you ever checked the prices on some photography websites? It's beyond the budget of any beginner designer. Did you know that there are many places online that allow you to get high-quality images for free?!! If you want to learn about the best free site for downloading images for design, keep reading this article.
Images are a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy, and they certainly can't be overlooked just because they might be expensive. Fortunately, there are many websites that allow designers to access free images online. In this article, we will showcase the best free site for downloading images for design.
Best Free Site for Downloading Images for Design
1. stock.xchng
We start our list of the best free sites for downloading images for design with Stock.xchng. The service is free, and they have over 350,000 images contributed by 30,000 photographers. The only downside to getting images from Stock.xchng is that the images are well-known and have been used extensively in many other places, making it hard to be original.
Stock.xchng is a stock photo site established in 2001 and is one of the most popular sites for paid images. However, there is a good selection of free illustrations and vectors on Stock.xchng that you can't find on larger free sites.
Target audience: web designers, web developers, illustrators, and print designers.
2. Morguefile
Morguefile is an excellent site that provides free photographs for commercial and non-commercial use. A small team of in-house professional photographers supplies the site with images.
After each upload, the color and image are enhanced and tagged by professional photographers. This site is a great place to find high-impact, good-looking images, and since the focus is on quality rather than quantity, the collection isn't as large as other sites.
Target audience: designers, as most images are of reasonable resolution.
3. MorguefileMorguefile
MorguefileMorguefile is dedicated to creatives, started in 1996, and is highly recommended by many web design and development professionals. Morguefile currently has 9,148 pages with 24 images on each page, and the images are of very good resolution.
The images are mostly of excellent quality, and you can filter your results by various attributes, which is helpful. The keyword tagging is relatively basic, with each image containing between five to fifteen tags, so use some terms to search.
If you use an image from Morguefile, you will be asked to credit the photographer when possible. The site can be a bit slow to load at times.
Target audience: illustrators, artists, and designers, teachers, and all other creative activities.
4. Pixel Perfect Digital
Pixel Perfect Digital is certainly misnamed as the images on the site are of high resolution, especially the illustrations. There are currently about 7,500 images on the site; despite the small number, they look good and have been selected by professionals.
Each image comes with a short accompanying story, which can be very helpful and certainly appreciated! You can either browse categories or use the basic search tool.
Target audience: both web and print designers.
5. Free Media Goo
Free Media Goo is a memorable name for an unforgettable site; in addition to having some good features, it includes a specialized search engine. The site was created by web developers for web developers, so there is free flash and sound in addition to free images. Unfortunately, the collection is small, and many images are somewhat unprofessional.
Target audience: web designers, web developers, illustrators, and print designers.
6. openphoto.net
The openphoto.net site has been collecting free images since 1998, with contributors from around the world. Many people use it as a photo blog site, so you may find many personal shots in a Flickr style. The search is very simple (just the keyword), but you have the option to browse categories to find images (which might be the easiest way).
Keyword tagging is extremely basic on the site, and in many cases, an image has only one tag unless your search is very specific. It's better to browse the categories on openphoto.net. Almost all images have a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.
Target audience: web designers and developers, as the images are often of very low resolution for many print tasks.
7. Flickr
Flickr is one of the largest online photo-sharing sites on the web, featuring a huge mix of amateur photos and professional photographers' images. The management team at Flickr consists of about 50 teams, and the site was recently acquired by Yahoo!
So it is run by a large group of people. Use the advanced search and check the "Creative Commons license" box to find images that can be used in your web design and development. The site has excellent tagging, making it very easy to find images within the topic that interests you.
Target audience: web design and development professionals, as most images displayed on the site are of very low resolution for print design work.
8. Stockvault
Stockvault offers a reasonably sized collection of very good images, with just over 16,000 images from 4,000 photographers. All images are licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
The site started as a personal site for Bjorgvin Gudmundsson in 2001. Keyword tagging is extremely basic, so explore the site using both the search option and categories. You can download images and templates for logos and backgrounds without signing up for the site. Stockvault has a nicer and more user-friendly interface than many other image sites.
Target audience: mostly web designers.
9. NASA
All images have a space theme, but the collection is large, and the images are very professional. The keyword tagging is good, and the resolution is always 640 pixels × 480 pixels, so it's not ideal for print design. Many shots are better suited as backgrounds.
Target audience: people interested in space exploration, but it is also useful for web designers looking for space-themed materials or shots.
10. deviantART
deviantART is a popular site for digital and traditional media artists to showcase their work. They have a great photography section on the site. deviantART is a large site with a big team and big ideas.
Target audience: artists, print designers, and web designers.
11. Everystockphoto
This site has a large number of indexed images, reaching into the millions. For example, there are over 67,000 results for the search term "clouds." You can search for free stock images from Morguefile, Freerange Stock, Photoxpress, Flickr, stock.xchng, NASA, Wikimedia Commons, and more in one place. They have good sorting and filtering options to help you find the perfect image, but there aren't many search options. You may be able to search across all the different sites here, but you still need to register for accounts on the site hosting the image.
Target audience: web designers, web developers, illustrators, and print designers.
12. Creative Commons
Creative Commons searches for images through Google, Yahoo, Flickr, Blip.tv, jamendo SpinExpress, Wikimedia Commons, and more. It may be the largest collection of free images in one place, but be careful, as some search results may not be under a Creative Commons license, so make sure before using the image. You can quickly search for one term across a good number of different media.
You can access the search features of each site instantly, but you may need to log in to download the image in some cases.
Target audience: web designers, web developers, illustrators, and print designers.
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