Find the perfect pic – for free
As we’ve mentioned, both Spark and Canva come with a library of free photos, and you can never have too many images. You can take your own photos, but if you want to create a lot of social media graphics, consider signing up to a stock photo site such as Stock Unlimited ( stockunlimited.com). Free users can make use of a library of 60,000 images, and you can access the full library of over a million visuals for just $79 per year, or $15 a month.
It’s not the only option, though. There are plenty of sites out there offering high-quality photos for free. Here are our favourites.
BucketListly bucketlistly.blog/photos
A great place to find stunning travel photos, which you can use free (with attribution) for non-commercial posts. The 7,000+ photos on offer cover big swathes of Europe and Asia, though there’s nothing for the UK or US yet.
Gratisography gratisography.com
Your first port of call when you’re looking for something fresh and quirky. Carefully composed and with striking use of colour, these images can be edited and used in both personal and commercial projects – just don’t sell them in their vanilla state.
ISO Republic isorepublic.com
Not the largest library, but the 3,000+ stock photos hosted here are offered under a free Creative Commons licence, for you to use how you like. There’s also a dedicated library of food photos at foodiefactor.com.
Kaboompics kaboompics.com
This site lets you search not only by subject but other useful things such as dominant colour and image orientation. The terms of the licence allow you to reuse the pictures, just so long as you don’t resell them.
Pexels pexels.com
Not just a photo library, but a good collection of videos too, all free for commercial and personal use with or without attribution. It’s one of the larger libraries with more than 40,000 stock shots currently on offer.
Picjumbo picjumbo.com
Search through more than 1,900 photos – or download the whole lot for a $15 contribution (or more, if you’re feeling generous). At around half a penny a shot, it’s a very cost-effective start to your own local image library.
Pixabay pixabay.com
An enormous resource with more than 1.4 million royalty-free stock photos in its library. All can be used in personal or commercial projects with no need to credit the original photographers, and dedicated Android and iOS apps make it easy to find stock shots when you’re blogging on the go.
Startup Stock Photos startupstockphotos.com
As the name suggests, this library focuses on startup culture, with plenty of pictures of people and businesses. Best of all, they’re offered under a full Creative Commons licence, with no rights reserved.
StockSnap stocksnap.com
This library is particularly useful for its shots of humans in all sorts of environments. There are dedicated categories for the two sexes, plus options for families, couples and abstract concepts such as “Happy” and “Love”.
Unsplash unsplash.com
One of the first free stock photo sites to gain widespread public attention, this is a huge library of stunning royalty-free images that you can use without payment or attribution in both commercial and personal work. It’s still one of our favourites.