Do you need exclusive images for your website, online store, or social media accounts? Do you want these images to be of high quality to satisfy your audience and followers?
I think your answer is yes, that’s why you are here reading these lines after I searched for the best photo sites, and I also know that you want to get these pictures for free.
I don’t think I need to remind you about the importance of using high quality images in creating any kind of content, whether in the form of blogs, even in your videos or on your social media accounts.
I also do not need to remind you of the danger of downloading any Google Images and reusing them in any way. Even when you post these pictures on social media sites like Facebook, there is a great risk.
And if you did not know, recently, Google has punished many sites for using images that have ownership rights, and Facebook has banned and closed many pages because of the same thing, and this happens at intervals every year.
That’s why in this guide you will not only find the best free stock image sites in terms of quality, but you will also find sites that provide you with protection and freedom to use these images for all purposes.
There is a lot of information on how to use images and preserve the rights of their owners, and how to ensure that the owners of these images allow their use for advertising purposes.
All this and more we’ll talk about in this complete guide to the best free, high-quality, all-purpose stock photo sites, we’ve picked this list with great care and after a long search.
Criteria for choosing the best free photo sites
As I told you earlier, we did not choose any site that contains free images only, but we chose these sites specifically based on specific criteria, especially the standards related to copyrights, and related to the law on the use of artistic and creative works, whether in an educational or commercial manner, in what is known as Creative Common Usage.
These criteria are:
- The site must be popular and used for long periods of time.
- The images provided by the site can be used for educational and educational purposes (blogs – videos), as well as for commercial purposes (ads – promotional content) on any platform.
- The site should provide a mechanism for reviewing images and property rights to avoid any problem for those who use them in the future.
- The site should provide a fairly large number of images that can be downloaded for free.
- The site should have a mechanism to search for images on various topics.
- The site should be updated by adding new photos periodically.
- The website should provide a great user experience.
This ensures, dear reader, that you will get the best ready-made images and templates, which you can use directly or modify them to create your own images.
If this is your goal (download and edit photos), I advise you to read the complete guide on the best photo editing software, which contains many information and tools that will help you improve the quality of your content.
11 Best Photo Editing Software Ever
I also want you to bear in mind that I did not include any image design sites in this list, most of these sites contain large collections of free images, which you can directly use while designing any image you want.
These sites are very useful – the image you saw at the beginning of this article was created using one of these sites, you can find out the best image design sites through the following guide.
Now let’s start presenting a list of the best free image sites, with the most important advantages and disadvantages of each site, so that you can choose the most suitable one for your site or your accounts on social networking sites.
1. Pixabay website
This site can be considered as the best site in the world to get free images, and because of this popularity and power, the giant Canva company bought it earlier this year to use it in the services it provides.
If you do not know the giant Canva site , this means that you did not read the article I referred to above about the best image design sites, this site offers many great services and I personally rely on it a lot in my work.
Coming back to Pixabay, the reason why it is one of the largest sites in this field is that it contains more than a million high quality images, which can be used for almost all purposes.
The main features of this site:
- You can search not only by topic or name, but also by the size of the images, so that you find the image that fits the platform on which you will display it without the need to waste time in editing images later.
- This site provides many types of images (normal images – vector – illustration), which you can choose during your search in order to reach what you want as soon as possible.
- You can also search by background type (either transparent or a specific color).
- You can search for photos by camera orientation (vertical photos – landscape photos).
- When uploading images, you can choose the image size, and the download format (PNG – JPG – Svg) according to its availability on the site.
- The site also contains great videos that you can download for free and use them like photos.
For these reasons, especially the accuracy of the search, many users consider this site the best for downloading free, high-quality images.
2. Unsplash
This site is used by many professional photographers to present their work to those interested, and in return for this, these photographers allow anyone to upload some of their photos and use them for all purposes.
When you search for any topic on this site and choose a specific image, you will find that you have opened the profile page of the owner of these images, and this is what many people use to their advantage in obtaining these images for free.
The main features of this site:
- It contains nearly half a million images and more.
- The images on this site are very special, and very artistic because they come directly from professional photographers.
- This site does not provide multiple image qualities when uploaded.
- It does not contain vector images.
I recommend using the images from this site if you want to post unique content on social media, and if you are looking to provide content for travel, social experiences and tips for living better.
3. Pexels website
One of the most popular high-quality image download sites, and because of this popularity, Canva also bought it earlier this year ??, in order to take advantage of the huge library it contains of images.
This site is similar to Unsplash in the way it displays images. It relies on collecting all the work of a certain photographer or artist in one profile, and it also allows you to follow this photographer privately so that you get a notification when he puts any picture in the future.
Many of the creators of this content consider this site to be the best ever because of the ease of extracting images and using them directly in various design tools, you will understand what I mean when you read the characteristics of this site.
The main features of this site:
- The images of this site are aesthetically pleasing and unusual.
- You can upload images in any size you want.
- The site has a good library of videos that you can download as well.
- This site provides you with a free plugin for WordPress so you can search for images directly from within your blog and easily add them to your site.
- This site provides you with a special addition to the giant Photoshop program so that you can use the images directly in your professional designs.
- The site also provides add-ons for Windows and Office, and an extension for the Chrome browser so that you can easily use images in creating any content you want on any platform.
All of these characteristics make this site very great for any novice designer or content maker who wants to save himself a lot of time and effort and at the same time outperform the competitors.
4. Depositphotos
Depositphotos is one of the leading websites in the world of visual content. This great site’s library includes more than 150 million images, videos, and vector files. This site embraces making creative visual content available to all people with all kinds of projects they are working on.
They really have a great stock of images that can take your website or company to another level by arming yourself with great collections of photos and videos that serve the business and achieve the goals.
Deposit Photo is one of the five leading websites in the world of visual content, and they are striving to be on the throne of this world.
The main features of this site:
- Offers a huge amount of high-quality images with flexible and affordable plans.
- They have a top-notch internal search engine for you to find the right file among the millions of other files on the site.
- They have a top level support team, and you can talk to them through instant chat.
- They have a massive team of 90,000 creative content creators all over the world.
- They have content in all the disciplines you might need, so they are a great choice for all types of business, or even for personal use.
- They have a huge library of audio files that you can use in your videos freely.
5. Rawpixel
One of the best sites to get high quality raw images in real size. True Image Size is the size at which images are output directly from high-quality cameras without modification.
Although this site only has exclusive images, which can only be downloaded after subscribing to the paid membership, it has a large library of free images that you can take advantage of.
The main features of this site:
- You can upload images in different sizes.
- You can download images in several formats such as (PNG – JPG – PSD – TIFF). These formats make you able to easily modify images in professional programs such as Photoshop, which does not affect the quality of the images.
- This site features a superb image breakdown which makes the search process very simple and helps you to get inspired and get creative with your image designs.
I would recommend using this site for anyone looking for high quality images, especially for social media sites, but you have to make sure when you use these images on your website that you reduce their size so as not to affect its speed.
6. Burst . website
This site is owned by the famous Shopify company (one of the world’s largest platforms for building electronic stores), which has become very famous due to the reliance of many marketers on dropshipping to make money from the Internet in recent years.
For this reason, Shopify has been keen to provide all the tools that shop owners and marketers need in their work, and the most important of these tools are images.
On the Burst website, you will find a large collection of images, which have been compiled very professionally to suit the style of displaying images of products and merchandise, whether in the description pages of any product or on social media.
The main features of this site:
- It is preferred for online stores and product review sites due to the nature and sizes of images it provides.
- It is preferred to use it for social media as well because it contains many templates that can be modified, known as (Mocks – Models).
- Images can be uploaded in two resolutions, one high (High Resolution) and the other (Low Resolution).
- It does not contain vector images.
7. Stocksnap
One of the great sites to get high quality images and small size, which website owners and bloggers need in their work on an ongoing basis.
The main features of this site:
- Contains a variety of images in many areas.
- Image sizes are low which makes it suitable for blogging.
- This site is based on the popular Shutterstock promotion for paid images, so keep this in mind while searching.
If you are the owner of a blog in the field of health, fitness, food or sports, I advise you to check this site, because it has many images that fit these areas.
8. Isorepublic
A simple but more than wonderful site for downloading high-quality images on various topics, and this site has a very special character, which makes it worthy of being on this list.
The main features of this site:
- This site is characterized by the fact that the pictures on it are modern photos, and the colors that are used are wonderful and new.
- This site does not contain as many images as the rest of the sites in this list.
- This site contains a good library of videos that you can download with the click of a button.
This site is worth checking out from time to time in order to be inspired by some ideas in your designs and pictures, and to follow the new trends in the pictures.
I recommend using this site to get content for different social media pages.
9. Foodiesfeed
As is clear from the name of this site, it is dedicated to eating pictures, and this is what distinguishes it from the rest of the sites on this list, and personally I consider it one of the best free picture download sites.
On this site, you will find a large assortment of pictures of food, divided according to the same types of food (meat – fish – vegetables – fruits), and you will also find pictures of the most famous foods such as pizza, pasta, salads, and others.
The main features of this site:
- It contains a good number of pictures.
- The pictures are super high quality and make you feel that the food in front of you is real.
- You will find many images of different sizes in each topic.
I warn you not to use this site a lot because it will make you feel hungry constantly ? ?. This site is suitable for owners of YouTube channels, social media pages, and blogs that talk about food, healthy eating and fitness in general.
There are hundreds of free image download sites out there, and I could have made this list a lot bigger, but as I told you in the introduction I made sure to collect the best resources that you could use without any problems.
There are many sites that enable you to use images and videos of all kinds for free, but with certain conditions, either that you mention the source of the image in your content or not use the image for commercial purposes.
Also, most other free photo sites rely on professional photographers to get new photos, and these photographers publish these photos on more than one site, so I made sure to put the most famous sites, and this ensures, dear reader, to get exclusive and new photos.
I think you are looking for exclusive images to use in creating content, and your purpose of content is to increase interaction with your audience, whatever platform you use to publish.
That is why I advise you to check out the complete guide to content marketing, which will help you create meaningful content that serves your audience, and will enable you to promote this content in an effective manner in order to achieve the best possible return on profits and interact with your audience.
