That means it’s not guaranteed that clients will have the chance to stumble upon your work. Secondly, they used to have a team that was responsible for keywording, which in my personal opinion is quite time-consuming and annoying. This agency really values its contributors and it treats them with respect. They sell directly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and distribute imagery to partner agencies all over the world.
All copyright-free images are available for commercial use, but some restrictions apply for distributors. Although it began as a free stock library, Death to Stock is now a membership-based service that provides you with fresh and authentic stock photos and videos. There are only 4,500+ images here, which is tiny compared to some of the major libraries, but they are really very good quality.
Death to Stock
Their image library boasts millions of royalty free stock photos, illustrations, and graphics. They’re constantly working to ensure that their library is filled with the highest quality content possible. IStock is an online royalty free, international micro stock photography provider based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The firm offers millions of photos, illustrations, clip art, videos and audio tracks. Artists, designers and photographers worldwide contribute their work to iStock collections in return for royalties.
More than 6,500 new photos are added every month, all produced by talented artists funded by the platform’s membership plans. Here are some of the best places for creative professionals to find premium stock photography. If you’re looking for something a bit quirky, Gratisography – a collection of pictures by talented photographer and graphic designer Ryan McGuire – is perfect.
Best Stock Photo Sites for High-Quality Images
Canva only provides one size—though the photos are all in high resolution. With more than three million photos and multiple plugins, Unsplash is one of the most easily accessible and largest collections of stock photos available. When reviewing these sites, I visited each one and signed up for an account if necessary. I explored the site’s menus and conducted a number of searches to see what types of photos would come up. Shopify is an online platform that lets people set up stores and sell their products.
Beyond that, there are technical considerations to take into account too. What are the licensing options available, and do they match your intended usage? While free stock photo sites exist, they may have limited offerings or lower-quality images. To access the full range of images and features, you’ll generally need to pay. Some stock photo sites are available for a one-time fee, while others require a subscription or offer pay-as-you-go options, so that may factor into your decision too.
Things to consider when comparing stock photography sites
Free stock photos and creative commons (cc0) and public domain photos. Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. All photos are nicely tagged, searchable and also easy to discover through our discover pages. We’ve listed the free stock photo sites first, as we’re assuming most readers are looking first for free photo resources. But if paid stock is what you’re looking for, then the sites in the second list will cater to your needs substantially. Stockvault is a stock image site that crowdsources images from people around the world.
You can search for something specific, or browse by themes including pastimes, emotions, and locations. Unsplash is a well-curated collection of beautiful photos donated by skilled photographers and has been used to create some incredible work. There are fewer images than you’ll find on Pixabay (see below), but the quality is more consistent. The photos are consistently high quality, and artists are paid for their contributions. There’s an excellent selection of filters that you can use to find exactly the right stock photo, and you can even upload an existing image to find similar pictures.
- Vecteezy is a new entry to this guide, mainly due to how modern it offers the user in features and search results, alongside plenty of high-quality images to help your projects.
- With a large library of 350 million stock photos, vectors, and videos, Alamy is one of the best stock photo sites.
- If you’re interested in other ways to sell your photography on the internet in addition to stock photography sites, then check out this article on How to Sell Your Photos Online.
- You have a wide array of images from which to choose – more photos, vectors, videos, and other files than you can shake a stick at.
- Typically, you cannot resell the royalty free photos to anyone else.
Both premium and free stock image websites have advantages and disadvantages which you’ll need to take into consideration when you’re sourcing images for your business. Freepik is a powerful search engine that helps users find free high-quality stock photos, and other graphic resources such as best free photo stocks for designers vector images, illustrations, and PSD files. Millions of graphic resources are available to download and can be used in any personal or professional design project. In addition, Freepik’s search engine has powerful filters helping to find any type of resource, orientation, color, style, etc.
