Nappy specializes in “beautiful photos of Black and Brown people.” Here you’ll see Black and Brown people living their lives — at home, at work, and everywhere else. Currently, the Flickr Commons image bank is supplied by dozens of libraries, museums, universities, and government institutions across several countries. You can even lend their cause a hand by creating tags and adding comments. Born of a pilot project with the Library of Congress, Flickr Commons has a noble mission, which is to share as many public photographs with the world as possible. And every one of them is classified as having no known copyright restrictions.
Founded by creative photographer Ryan McGuire, the site offers thousands of unique photos, many of them produced by the founder himself. It also offers vector graphics in EPS format, so it’s worth a look for designers, too. In this guide, discover a list of the best websites for premium stock photos and free stock photos alike. Plus, get a breakdown of the licensing options for each platform, so you know which photos you can use worry-free. Authentic.co is a curated collection of exclusive, high-quality, creative, and commercially viable imagery.
Boutique collection. Big impact.
As the name suggests, Icons 8 offers a wide variety of stock icons, along with stock illustrations, photos, and music. With a gorgeous library featuring photos of trans and non-binary models, The Gender Spectrum by VICE promotes better representation in stock photography. Life of Pix offers a wide selection of high-resolution photos with a special focus on the photographers themselves. Every week, the homepage highlights a new collection of images, showcasing the work of the Photographer of the Week. Get creative, experimental, and weird with these unique stock photo collections.
Here’s how to choose a hero image that elicits an immediate positive response. We’ve compiled a checklist of everything you’ll need to mark your presence online without spending a dime. Get the best, coolest, and latest in design and no-code delivered to your inbox each week. Build completely custom, production-ready websites — or ultra-high-fidelity prototypes — without writing a line of code.
Getty Images
The search function allows you to search for both photo and video at the same time or filter by one or the other. With commonly used photo categories like business, school, nature, and travel, you have quite a few options of high-resolution photos to choose from. Some of these do link out to Shutterstock (a paid stock image website), which can be a bit annoying.
They also set up challenges for photographers to participate in, putting out calls for photos based around themes or subject matter, with the opportunity to win prizes for their work. The secret of Kaboompics’ success is working in the sophisticated intricacies of photography. You can download free stock photos for designers resources used in photo productions, such as color palettes and composition materials. Best premium resource for unique photo assets, worry-free licensing, and affordability. Find out how to capture gorgeous product photos for your ecommerce websites without spending a lot of money.
tips on designing for content creators
The icon packs are particularly useful because they cover an entire category, such as airport travel or podcasting, and ensure a consistent look across the board. With over three million icons in their library, The Noun Project has quite a diverse and extensive collection. So whether you’re building an ecommerce website or a pop culture newsletter, The Noun Project has you covered. Vecteezy is ideal for projects that require something standard, like a smartphone or laptop screen, for instance. Rather than spend the time illustrating a phone, you can grab a pre-designed vector file and then add your design to the screen.
- With more generous prices than the big competitors, Death to Stock Photo is a great paid alternative for those who need original, creative, high-resolution photos and videos.
- Some of these do link out to Shutterstock (a paid stock image website), which can be a bit annoying.
- Categories like “Hijinks Hands” “Goofy Grownups,” and “Amusing Animals” deliver on that promise of quirkiness.
Pexels is particularly popular for bloggers, marketers, content creators, and anyone looking for some great wallpapers. As another photo-centric site, it regularly promotes interviews with photographers and offers photo challenges with prizes. One of the best all-around stock image sites on the web, Unsplash has more than 1 million professional quality photos in high resolution, including a new category with 3D images. The site serves as something of a portfolio for professional photographers, so photo attribution is pretty common when using someone’s work, although it’s not required. While there is a search bar, this simple Tumblr site seems designed for browsing. To explore the curated collection of public domain photos from various public archives, you’ll have to scroll through pages of different historical locations and events.
Unique stock photo websites
Organized by category, the site’s images are high quality and easy to find. In business for over 25 years, Getty Images offers unique media captured and created by world-renowned photographers, videographers, and illustrators. The platform also offers several customized services for all types of visual content. Here are some of the best places for creative professionals to find premium stock photography. For commercial purposes, Reshot’s stock icon, photo, and illustration library is a solid choice. Categories like medical, real estate, education, social media, and business make it simple to find icons and entire icon packs for industry-specific designs.
But choosing the wrong ones can get you or your business into trouble, so it’s worth a quick look at the different licenses and what they mean. If you stumble upon a rare image that’s too small or overprocessed, Vintage Stock Photos can help you re-scan and remaster it. Each month, we gather and share emotional storytelling imagery that depicts real people and real places. Find inspiration with these six design websites to build brilliant brands. Life of Pix even has a photographer directory that allows you to search photographers by name, view Instagram-like profile pages, and add them to your favorites. The leaderboard gives you direct access to check out the collected works of some of their greatest contributors.
Startup Stock Photos
For example, design tools, such as Figma and Sketch, have an Unsplash browser built-in. Stocksy is a cooperative of creatives offering authentic photos and videos produced by industry professionals. You won’t find the images you find on Stocksy anywhere else, since images are purchased directly, rather than the typical browse-and-click approach. As you’ve probably noticed, there are amazing free stock images all over the web.
Adobe Stock has a library of over 100 million high-resolution images, all of which are integrated into Creative Cloud. For designers and illustrators, finding, purchasing, and using Adobe Stock’s imagery is quick and easy. These sites expand their photo collections to include stock icons, illustrations, and vector art so you can create a cohesive look for personal and commercial projects. With over 300 million licensed images, Shutterstock is the market giant when it comes to paid stock photos.
The biggest advantage of choosing a premium stock photo site is the guarantee of working with a unique visual resource. If you’re on the hunt for photos with impeccable color palettes, composition, and impressive use of negative space, you’ll find more than a few on Kaboompics. This site was founded by talented photographer Karoline Grabowska and has over 17,000 exquisite photos, many of which are in the interior design and lifestyle category. You’ll find photo essays, editorials, photojournalism, historical photos, 4K and HD videos, music, graphic design resources, and other media produced by hundreds of thousands of creators. Whether you use a free stock site or pay for higher-quality photos, be sure to read any copyright restrictions carefully, so you understand what you can and can’t do with the media you choose.
