12 Amazing Websites to Find High-Quality Stock Images for Free

Find great stock photos websites on the internet for free and use them to make a collage

Joseba Elorza (@miraruido) is an illustrator and animator who has also trained as a sound technician; Joseba loves collage. His work has been published in such titles as The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, and the Hollywood Reporter, and he’s created animations for National Geographic, Amazon Studios, Green Day, and more.

In this blog post, Joseba shares a list of his go-to websites for making a collage, all of which offer royalty-free images that can be used for different types of content.

CC Search

CC Search is a tool for discovering openly licensed and public domain resources. More than a simple search engine, it scans over 300 million images and pulls together results from multiple public archives in a single catalog.

Unsplash

Unsplash offers over 1,000,000 free high-resolution photos brought to you by a generous community of photographers from all over the world. The selection of images available is a lot more creative and original than Joseba’s previous recommendation.

Pixabay

Pixabay is a dynamic community of creatives exchanging copyright-free images and videos. All content is published under the Pixabay License, enabling users to use resources without needing to ask for permission or credit the author, even for commercial use.

Pexels

Pexels provides high-quality stock photos for free under the Pexels license. Each photo is tagged and easy to search for, making it a very user-friendly site.

Everypixel

This powerful search engine indexes 50 websites offering stock images both for free and a fee, allowing users to explore a vast database of resources.

Stocksnap.io

This site offers stunning, high-quality stock photos for all uses, including commercial, for free.
The first images in the selection are from Shutterstock. However, from the second row on, you can see free images.

Picjumbo

This stock photo site, which has been up and running since 2013, shares free images that are used by millions of bloggers, designers, and marketing specialists around the world. The only drawback is that the photo size isn’t listed.

Freepik

Freepik is a powerful search engine that helps users find free high-quality stock photos, and other graphic resources such as vector images, illustrations, and PSD files.

Canva

Canva is an online graphic design platform that offers a wide range of tools and provides access to an extensive library of high-quality images that can be used for free in your design projects.

FreeImages

FreeImages is a website providing a diverse array of high-quality images at no cost. Its collection includes photographs, vectors, clipart, icons, and PSD files.

Kaboompics

Kaboompics is a website that offers a wide variety of high-quality photographs, available for free for both personal and commercial use.

Gratisography

Gratisography is a website that provides high-quality, unique stock photos available for free download and use.

If you want to learn more of Joseba’s tricks, check out his Domestika courses Animated Collage with Adobe After Effects and Retro Movement in After Effects.

You may also like:

–5 Free Tutorials to Master After Effects
–Photoshop Tutorial: How to Cut out Images so You Can Animate Them
–After Effects Tutorial: Types of Layers