Best Free Royalty Free Stock Photos for Commercial Use

Best Free Royalty Free Stock Photos

Where can you find free royalty free stock photos? Right here. Here is a list of websites that provide images that you can use for any purpose free of charge. Many websites provide royalty free stock images or photos for a fee. But the image sites below, for the most part, allow you to use the images in your project for free.

• Although the sites listed below allow you to use the images without cost to you, take care to read the license agreement for each website. Some of the websites have restrictions on usage. Some of the websites ask that you credit the website or the original creator of the photograph or image.

There are two major challenges that occur when searching for beautiful royalty free photos to help make your content marketing better.

• First challenge. The majority of picture websites state they have royalty free photos, however, this is really just a ploy to draw you in. They state “royalty free” photos and then charge a fee for downloading the pictures.A typical instance is, ShutterStock. ShutterStock state, “Over 35 Million Stock Images, Vectors, and Footage Clips” … “Everything you need for your creative project. Plus, it’s all royalty-free“. Don’t misunderstand me, I think ShutterStock possess some great professional photographers who deliver extremely high quality images. But to the layman, this gives the impression the images are free when they are not.
• The second challenge is finding unique, high quality photos. There is simply too much dross around. The advent of the digital camera has given us a plethora of really poor photos being shared as quality stock photos.

Low quality photos don’t help you stand out from the crowd. While you can shoot your own photos, most of us just don’t have a great eye for taking memorable photos. If you do like taking photos and want to be different, take a look at the book, Trick Photography And Special Effects. You can read my review here. Needless, to say I think this book gives a fantastic insight for us budding photographers.

Visitors are demanding distinctive, engaging experiences online and top level images are part of that experience. Fortunately, there are websites offering top quality, totally free photos on a regular basis. The following list are the websites I personally use the most.

These sites are perfect for blog posts, website header images, postcards, social media or visual storytelling. If you add some textual content as an overlay you can create a professional storytelling image free of charge (other than the cost of your time). Simply provide your imagination and creativity.

Note 1: The image examples show here are low resolution. To see the hi-res image go to the specified website.

Note 2: Sites listed in alphabetical order.

 

Clker

Clker provides royalty free public domain clipart and pictures that can be used for free. The clipart and pictures are uploaded by users who share their public domain work.

This is another really good site with a wide range of unusual categories and quality to select from. Images are shared in small, medium and large sizes.

 

 

 

Dotspin

Dotspin provide their photos under the creative commons attribution 3.0 license. Dotspin is also the world’s largest marketplace for Instagram photos. With, Dotspin, if you download photos for personal use (your own blog), you can do so for free. If you intend to use them commercially, you must buy a license for each photo.

The photo quality available ranges from good to professional. These are a selection of some of the creative commons images available:

 

 

 

Flickr

There’s more creative commons images on Flickr than any other site I know. The problem is, there’s too much. People simply upload their images without considering it’s artistic value. It’s like my wife’s photo album of the children, nothing gets thrown away. Hence there is a lot of dross to sift through to find anything of real quality. Unfortunately this can be said of many similar sites.

That having been said, here are some interesting photos I found on Flickr:

 

 

 

Free Digital Photos

There are many royalty free photos and icons at FreeDigitalPhotos.net. If you use a free image, which are sized at about 400×300 pixels, you must publish an acknowledgement to FreeDigitalPhotos.net and the image creator on the same page or screen where the image is used. Otherwise you have to pay a small charge for a large version of the image.

Their free photos and illustrations are ideal for blogs, business, personal and educational use. They have a huge selection of really good photos and illustrations.

 

 

 

Free Images

FreeImages provides the largest number of (good) free images I’ve seen online. They had over 408360 photos by more than 30.000 photographers available the last time I visited, all free of charge and usable for any purpose.

 

 

 

Gratisography

More completely free high-resolution images that you can use on your personal and commercial projects are available from Gratisography. All of the photos were taken by Ryan McGuire of Bells Design and are free of all copyright restrictions.

What can I say about Ryan’s photos? They’re unusual and querky. He offers some very beautiful and interesting images. Definitely nothing you’ll find in the standard stock photo sites.

To download an image in really high-resolution version, just click the image. Ryan adds new, awesome pictures weekly so don’t forget to visit regularly.

Here are a few of Ryan’s many pictures:

 

 

 

Little Visuals

Little Visuals is another treasure trove of seriously good photos which are free to use however you like. These beautiful images could take pride of place on anyone’s wall. They release new photos every week so either keep checking back or subscribe and have them emailed to you.

• Although you don’t have to, please give credit to the photographer.

Tip: Although not obvious, you can search through the photo categories by clicking the little green box at the top left of the Little Visuals screen.

 

 

 

Pixabay

On Pixabay you may find and share images free of copyrights. All pictures are published under creative commons public domain deed CC0 1.0 universal. They can provide thousands of public domain images.

You can copy, modify, distribute and use the images, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission and without paying attribution.

This is a really good site with a very wide selection of photos.

 

 

 

Stock Photos for Free

The website Stock Photos for Free states they have over 100,000 completely free stock photos from around the world in many categories.. After you register (free), you are able to download the images without a logo on them.

They state, “There are never any fees to download our stock photos, and they come with a royalty free license so you can use them in all types of media, for worldwide distribution, forever. You can even use them in commercial projects-always free!”

 

 

 

SuperFamous Studios

The SuperFamous site is the Los Angeles-based studio of Dutch interaction designer Folkert Gorter. They provide their photos under the creative commons attribution 3.0 license. This means that you can use the work for your own purposes – including commercial use, as long as credit is provided.

The photos are clearly the work of a professional artist. Take a look at some of the images available:

 

 

 

Unrestricted Stock

Unrestricted Stock provides many vector graphic images as well as icons and hand drawn images that you can use for just about anything free of charge. They also have a growing stock photograph section that is also free of charge.

I found some of their vector images are quite intriguing.

 

 

 

Unsplash

Unsplash is my favourite. They have amazing quality images taken by photographers from all over the world. The images are completely free to use in any way you like as the photographer has dedicated the work to the public domain.

• Although you don’t have to, please give credit to the photographer.

Unsplash has some really excellent photographers, and the range of photographs available is truly amazing. The photo quality available ranges from excellent to professional. These are a selection of some of the images available:

 

 

 

Other Sites with Free Royalty Free Stock Photos

Finally, if you have any thoughts or suggestions relating to free royalty free stock photos, don’t forget to let me have them in the comment box below. If you know of any really good photo sites, then drop the details down below and I’ll see about adding them to the list. Thanks for dropping by.