In addition to photographs, you can purchase vectors, editorial pieces, sound effects, music, 3D models, backgrounds, and other creative assets. The Shutterstock platform also has an API that companies can integrate with their tools and apps. In this guide, discover a list of the best websites for premium stock photos and free stock photos alike.

Hundreds of new options are uploaded daily, so there’s always fresh material. You’ll find photo essays, editorials, photojournalism, historical photos, 4K and HD videos, music, graphic design resources, and other media produced by hundreds of thousands of creators. Stocksy is a cooperative of creatives offering authentic photos and videos produced by industry professionals.

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Another popular site for creators looking for high-quality photos and stock videos is Pixabay. Pixabay has over 2.6 million high-quality images and videos free for personal and commercial purposes. The site is easy to use and has quality filters to help you find what you’re looking for.

You’re allowed to modify all royalty-free stock photos from any site, except those marked with “Editorial use only” or if their license specifies otherwise. This applies to all major stock image sites, including Shutterstock and Adobe Stock. Graphic designers may also work with photographers or illustrators directly, commissioning them to create bespoke images for their projects. This usually results in unique, tailor-made visuals that perfectly match the designer’s vision.

Make estimating web design costs easy

You may be able to search all the different sites here, but you still have to sign up for accounts on the site that hosts the image. Yes, you’re welcome to crop, resize, add text and filters, or otherwise modify our stock photos as you see fit. If you don’t have Photoshop, there are lots of free or low cost online graphics editors
that you can use instead.

Plus, get a breakdown of the licensing options for each platform, so you know which photos you can use worry-free. Graphic designers create visual content, which includes strategic use of colors, font, composition, and shapes to create beautiful graphics. An integral part of design is high-quality images—that is non-negotiable. And the cheapest and most convenient way for designers to get images is through stock photo agencies like Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, and Canva. Graphic designers source their images from a variety of locations, each offering unique options to enhance their designs.

Best quality or nothing

Organized by category, the site’s images are high quality and easy to find. The founders of Startup Stock created the site in 2014, starting with just a few photos of their friends and family. Today, the site attracts thousands of visitors, especially bloggers, freelancers, designers, and content marketers.

Then you can quickly jump to a stock photo agency of your choice and browse hundreds of images. That’s why graphic designers prefer to use stock images that only cost a few cents each. Even expert designers such as those at WebFX in Harrisburg use stock photos, and these are some great places to find them. One of the best all-around stock image sites on the web, Unsplash has more than 1 million professional quality photos in high resolution, including a new category with 3D images. The site serves as something of a portfolio for professional photographers, so photo attribution is pretty common when using someone’s work, although it’s not required. In this competitive digital arena, content creators, brands, and marketers need great visuals if they want their projects to stand out.

Which is the right stock image site for you?

Their admirable goal is to provide stock photography for both commercial and non-commercial use, for free. They give away their collections with the hope that they are useful and enjoyed. A small team of in-house professional photographers supplies the photos in the site. And there are options for all budgets best stock photography for designers — premium stock photos are more affordable than you might imagine. Get a list of the best stock photo websites for designers and creatives. It’s one of the most popular stock photography sites out there, offering the largest collection of royalty-free images, and it’s a well-regarded, trusted platform.

• Photutorial tested the best stock photo sites for designers to help you find the top option for keeping yourself stocked up with beautiful visuals.
• You can use these free photos on your
  online store, product packaging, or anywhere else you’d like.
• They have good sorting and filtering options to help you find the perfect photo, but not heaps of search options, though.
• You can find thousands of photos, most of which are somewhere between 40 and 80 years old, in remastered JPEG format.
• In fact, we’d highly encourage it, as many of our collections were
  created with entrepreneurs in mind.
• We’re looking for high-resolution, professional images that can be used
  by designers, developers, bloggers and entrepreneurs.

The Public Domain Review is also an online magazine, with essays and other collections. Highly regarded by specialized critics, the site attracts droves of researchers, writers, scholars, and art history lovers. Founded in 2011, the platform offers a wealth of media from public archives, some of it more than a century old. They use vector graphics because it allows you to scale your work without losing quality. Vector graphics can be scaled infinitely without loss of quality, while raster graphics cannot.

Search is extremely simple (keyword only), but you do have the option to browse categories to find images (which is probably the easiest way). It’s called “morguefile” in reference to the term used for a place to keep postproduction creative materials. The photos are mostly great quality, and you can filter your results by several characteristics, which is handy. Keyword tagging is relatively basic, with between five and fifteen tags per photo, so use a few terms to search. But choosing the wrong ones can get you or your business into trouble, so it’s worth a quick look at the different licenses and what they mean. If you stumble upon a rare image that’s too small or overprocessed, Vintage Stock Photos can help you re-scan and remaster it.

Feel free to add your logo or brand to our images to make them your own. Free stock photos are great resources for designers because they are easy to find and can save you money. However, it’s important to understand how to use these images properly so you don’t end up with a copyright infringement problem down the road. The best way to avoid problems is to buy a license, like a royalty-free license. A reasonable sized collection of quite good photos is available at Stockvault.

What is the best stock photo site for designers?

“Low Res” images are great for small web graphics, where file sizes need to be very compressed. “High Res” images are better for presentations, websites, online stores, and anywhere else where
quality matters most. On the other hand, we included Envato Elements due to the breadth of content combined with unlimited downloads at a low fixed fee, making it a great budget option. The site also allows other photographers to share their images with users while adhering to the rules of the public domain. Any user photos are also evaluated before publishing and must meet quality standards.