It can always be tricky finding high quality images to use in your marketing and especially so for those to be used for large format printing. Most people are aware of the big images libraries such as Shutterstock and iStockphoto, with their huge image libraries, but what about the businesses with a limited budget who have to run lean with their marketing campaigns? Well, luckily there are image galleries out there that run on different revenue models and as such will provide images to be used for free.
If you are using a search engine like Google to find images, you have to be careful using images for business purposes as many images are under copyright and can not be used in this way without express permission from the copyright owner. Helpfully in Google image search there is a ‘usage rights’ option under the ‘more tools’ heading, which allows you to find images suitable for business use.
If you are searching for images using the term ‘creative commons licence’ you will find two types; ‘zero’ which means you can use the images any way you like or ‘attribution’ which means you are free to use the photo but need to add a credit on your site to the photographer or licence holder.
We have listed some of our favourite resources for free images below, but you will have to check the attribution and licensing restrictions based on your intended use.
Pixabay
An easy to use design that works great across devices, and a huge library of images.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
Unsplash
A great site for high resolution photos. If you subscribe to their newsletter you get sent 10 new photos every 10 days. And as they say you are free to ‘do what you want’ with the images.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
Pexels
https://www.pexels.com/
A simple to use site with a rankings leaderboard of top photographers on the site. An active community of photographers use the site, with CC0 license.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
StockSnap
https://stocksnap.io/
Modern interface with a great range of filters to find the right image for your project without copyright restrictions.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
picjumbo
Totally free, premium quality stock images with over 3.8m downloads at time of writing. A huge collection of images and easy to use navigation.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
PDPics
PDPics.com is a repository of free public domain pictures taken by their team of in house photographers. The site isn’t as slick as some of the others on this list, but the images are very good quality.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
Gratisography
A fantastic gallery of images, many with a marketing or commercial theme, with new images added weekly. A very nice site to use and navigate around.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
Morguefile
Don’t let the name put you off, this site has a great selection of images and good search facility. They also have additional resources for creatives.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
IM Free
A curated library of images suitable for business and commercial use.Curated library of business related images that can be used for commercial use. Does require attribution to the creator.
Attribution required: Yes
Commercial use: Yes
Picography
A simple site to use with search box facility. Has a wide selection of images taken by a group of professional photographers.
Attribution required: No
Commercial use: Yes
StockArch
A site run by a community of photographers. A really nice collection of images with good search features and categorisation.
Attribution required – Yes
Commercial use – Yes
