Guest post by James Adams
If you’re searching for the perfect image to make your presentation or web site spectacular, try taking a look at some of the best stock photo sites on the web. Many of these sites don’t require registration, so you can pick and choose your shots in anonymity. In alphabetical order, here are ten of the best sites for royalty-free stock photos:
1. Flickr
A list of this type would not be complete without adding the gigantic Flickr library. There are literally millions of photos on Flickr, many of which are available for your use under the Creative Commons license.
2. Geek Philosopher
There are plenty of photos here for download, the only price being proper attribution to Geek Philosopher for their usage. This site doesn’t concentrate solely on free stock photos, so their library is smaller than many represented here. Although the choice of stock imagery isn’t as deep, GP does have many of the ‘standard’ stock photos available for your use.
3. Free Historical Stock Photos
Historical Stock Photos, as the name suggests, focuses on pictures from the past. Their small library has some great color images from the WWII era in particular, which are full of grit and character. There are also posters and other memorabilia, and photos from Dorothea Lange.
4. Image*After
You can search through the nearly 30,000 images on Image*After by texture, color and category. Image*After doesn’t have the variety of categories commonplace on many of its competitors, but it more than makes up for it by having plenty of photos in each category. The drop down menus make finding photographic gold for your website or blog somewhat less of a challenge.
5. Morguefile
One of the main benefits of using Morguefile is that its license has almost no restrictions. You can search through the 100,000+ photographs by variables including keyword, category and rating. The site has vibrant forum and community of passionate photographers.
6. PhotoRack
PhotoRack separated its photos into categories, then into many more specific subcategories. In addition to photos, PhotoRack also has wallpapers and textures available for free download.
7. Pixel Perfect Digital
Pixel Perfect Digital’s library is separated into textures, photographs and digital imagery. There are around 4,200 stock photos available, categorized and sub-categorized for ease of use.
8. Stock.XCHNG
This highly respected and widely known site has a great selection of images which touch on almost every topic. Their license is slightly different from the other sites listed here, though it is still very liberal with the conditions of use. Stock.XCHNG may not be the easiest name to remember, but the site itself is easy to search.
9. Stockvault.net
The images and textures on Stockvault are of very high quality with beautiful photos and renderings available for use on your blog or website. These images are free to use for personal ventures, but you need to purchase rights to use Stockvault’s content commercially.
10. Unprofound
Unprofound doesn’t require you to register, nor are there many restrictions on the photos that you choose. Instead of categories, the photos themselves are sorted by color. You can use the search function to narrow your options down and find the image you need.
The perfect photo for your blog or website might be hiding in one of these galleries. Enhance your posts and make your reader’s experience more rewarding by using one of these royalty-free images.
James Adams is a staff writer working for Cartridge Save where he reviews products such as the HP 343 ink cartridge and helps to maintain their design blog.
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Sweet, thanks. Images offer a great value to the website because they make it more sticky and grab the readers attention. If I make a niche website I usually put images in them, attention grabbing graphics, and that ensures that their attention is mostly on my website not anywhere else. Its also just important to add relevant images to your articles and that means a lot for your web.