To find an image that is royalty and copyright-free can be very hard to do.
Nobody wants to be accused of using someone’s content or picture without going through the right processes. So, I have listed 12 places to find royalty and copyright-free images to set you up for success.
There are a lot of sites you can visit and get free images to use on your WordPress blog and on your Pinterest pins. These sites are user-friendly and they have an excellent reputation.
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Why You Should Not Use an Image without Permission
Some content creators use any image from the internet because they don’t know the repercussions. If your content happens to go viral and it contains videos or images belonging to another creator, you may be sued. This could cost you a lot of money.
YouTube and search engines like Google might give you a DMCA takedown notice. If they discover that parts of your content belong to another creator to who you don’t have permission. This is why you have to purchase your images or look for sites that share permission-free images.
12 Places For royalty and copyright-free images.
1. Barn Images
This site went public in 2015. By two freelancing photographers from Latvia named Roman Drits and Igor Trepeshchenok. BarnImages.com does not showcase the content or links of other creators. All the images on the site are copyrighted by its owners.
Here, you will see different images every week, and you are allowed to use them for any purpose.
2. The Pik Wizard Platform
This site is fairly new and has a lot of free photos that you can use for commercial or blogging purposes. Regardless, whether you have an online business or are a blogger. Thus the images in this collection are of high quality and will be a nice addition to your blog or business page.
3. Free images.com
The image categorization of this site is top-notch and this is why the site gets a lot of visitors on a weekly basis.
Free images.com is a very organized site with extremely high-quality images. These are segmented into different niches and search metrics, hence it is very easy to locate the kind of images you are searching for.
4. Stock Photos for free.com
This name is a perfect description of what the site specializes in; it has plenty of collections filled with free stock photos that you can use for any purpose.
The majority of their images are shots taken from HD videos. The site only requires that you register with an active Gmail account and you can start with your free-images journey.
5. Flickr (CC)
Flickr is popularly known as a site that sells copyright images but there is a section called the creative commons section. In this section, you will be able to view and download royalty-free images.
Creative Commons is a license that allows the site to enter into an agreement with the creator of those images. It gives the public permission to use the images on a number of conditions.
Here are the conditions:
- No Derivative works can be done with the images
- You are required to acknowledge the owner of the image by giving photo credit
- You are only allowed to use it for non-commercial purposes.
The reason for these conditions is so that they can benefit both the person using the image and the creator of the image.
6. Pexels Photo Sharing Platform
Pexels has been in existence since 2014, and it can boast a collection of over 35,000 photos that can be used for both commercial and personal purposes.
The site gives you the permission to copy, modify and even redistribute these images. As a result, they are consistent in adding new photos and the site gets more than 3000 good and attractive images every month.
7. Life of Pix.com
This site gives you many unique and free high-resolution images. Posted on the site on a weekly basis, they use a lot of different photographers who can produce stunning images.
The site is free to use, and as a result, photographers who want to showcase their work can register and submit their creations.
8. Stock Snap.io
With a collection of high-resolution images, this site allows you to modify, copy and even redistribute any image. The site adds a lot of high-resolution and unique images every week and you can use those images for any purpose you desire.
9. Wikipedia CC
This site is similar to that of the Flickr creative commons section. It is a project by the Wikimedia foundation that allows you to get illustrations, drawings, and other creative images on the domain section.
When you use the content or images from this collection it will require you to acknowledge and give photo credit to the source of the image.
10. The Unsplash Project
This site was started as a side project by a group of startup entrepreneurs. Consequently, it has over 250,000 attribution-free and Royalty-free images you can use for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
11. Free Photo Finder Platform
This is a tool created by Expert World Travel; it gives you the opportunity to input a keyword or search term on the search box when looking for a particular image.
12. Pixabay Free Photos
This is one of the easiest free photo forums to use with over 800+ free photos available to download. High quality. Easy selection search bar.
Input a search term or keyword into the search box, and the tool will look for images related to the keyword or search term you typed in. You can then select the one that fits the description of the kind of image you are searching for.
Wrapping up
As earlier stated at the beginning of this post, using other people’s content without permission will not be good for you as a content creator. So explore the sites mentioned in this article if you want to get permission for free images.
There are a lot of free photos on offer and it is worth making it a practice to only use copyright and royalty-free photos for your website.
Now that you have 12 places to find royalty and copyright-free images you will never break the law again.
Thank you for visiting, I would love it if you would leave a comment and share this blog.
Have you found any other places to get free photos, let me know in the comments?
LILY
In my search for photos, I want to use for different reasons I have found it sometimes difficult to find the photos I need for the specific type of product I am looking for.
Also finding free photos that have excellent picture color and quality is difficult.
Your website helps answer these questions.
Mike
So pleased that this helped you to find some other places to get free photos from. Keep up the great work.
Thanks for the article. Using royalty and copyright-free photos is getting easier and easier for bloggers. I wasn’t aware of some of the sites you listed and will be adding them to my source listings. Receiving a DMCA takedown notice as a “novice” blogger can be intimidating. I didn’t even know what DMCA stood for when I received my first takedown notice (I’ve received several over the years). The best idea is not to take the chance and make sure you are using royalty and copyright-free photos or you have specific permission to use the photos in the manner in which you are doing so.
You are correct William it is so important to make a habit of only using photos that you are allowed to, I’m sure receiving your first DMCA was a bit shocking. Better to not go there and have that problem. Keep up the great work.
My site is a travel site, and I depend on using a lot of images. It takes me a long time to find a picture to use. So this information is great! I will go to each one and see if any will work better then just searching Google and making sure the image is usable. It is very time consuming!
Hi Lea, I’m sure that you will find a lot of usable pictures more easily by using these resources. I think it would be fun to run a travel blog, I love traveling.
I am so pleased I came across your article, this is interesting because the last thing you want to do, is getting into legal problems with these entities. Flickr (CC), for me personally, would not work just want to keep it simple. Really appreciate the effort you put into bringing this together. I will be saving this article.
Hi Tracey and what a great comment. It sounds like you have your finger on the pulse in finding copyright-free photos and this will give you some more places to keep filling your website will color.