12 best free high quality image websites for designers

Images speak more than words.
An image is equivalent to thousands of words.

No one can deny the above quotes and even science acknowledges the fact that our brain can process images better than text, any time of the day. On the other hand, the visual impression of a website is an important factor for evaluation of the site by the visitors. Better design always helps and leaves an impression on the mind of the reader. There is no fact denying that good design and correct usage of images in the articles can increase its worth by hundred times.

Finding the right image take time and without the right search tool, you can find yourself lost in the puzzle to often. Also, finding free images is hard and can cause headache. There are many online resource site such as Shutterstock and others that offer excellent high-quality images at the small price. Not everyone can have the luxury to buy images on the daily purpose for our blogs and websites. And, there comes the role of free stock images websites that keeps everyone happy.

The different type of license that are related to images. They are copyright images, Royalty free license, flat free license, right managed license. But, we are not interested in any of them. The only license, we are interested in is Creative Commons license which makes images free to use, modify and copy without author intervention. You can find more about CC license here.

That’s why we today list 12 best free high quality image websites for designers and site content editors. They resource can also be used by casual bloggers and educators for presentational purposes.

1. Google.com(Life)

Google is famous for providing meaning to the web, and with Google.com(Life), they provide life to the historical pictures. You can choose to use the images as you wish for personal, non-commercial usage.

You can search for any image using the service by using the string, “source: life” to any query in Google search.

2. Unsplash

Unsplash is one of the popular free sources of high quality images. Unsplash is special for me, as they offer an amazing collection of 10 high quality pictures every 10 days into mailbox. That’s sums up the amount of 30 amazing images every month! Now, that’s amazing. Another important reason, why I love Unsplash is because it offers completely free images to the user base. This clearly means that you can use the images from Unsplash into your blog, website or any other place without any limitation.

3. Creative Commons

Creative Commons is an image aggregator that aggregates high quality images from different sources on the Internet into one single place. The good thing about Creative Commons is that it only searches free-to-use images.

The Creative Commons aggregates images from sources such as Wikipedia Commons, Google Images, Pixabay, and Flikr. This can easily prove to be the one-stop solution for all your image needs.

The tool aggregates only the images that are completely free or fall in the category of Creative Commons license and you get the point, yes, the images can be used without any prior notification of any kind, leading to modification of any sort without permission.

4. IM Free

There are many reasons, why I cannot stop myself from listing IM Free. It’s such an amazing site that will keep your image needs in check! The images listed by the site can be used for commercial use and of course the images are free.

The site lists images from different niches such as technology, sports, medicine, fitness, and education.

As this site acts similar to an aggregator, it’s advisable to our readers to check the license from the original source before using the image in your blog.

5. Public Domain Archive

Just like Creative Commons, Public Domain Archive, is an aggregator that works on the idea of aggregating images all over the internet. The site’s author directly archives all the high quality and free images.

The navigation of the site is easy and intuitive and also have search options including searching by category. From the site, you can find any kind of image including landscapes, nature and many more.

6. Magdeleine

Are you in search of high quality, high-resolution image? Then, Magdeleine is for you. The site is unique as the photographers manually add images to the site compared to other aggregators we discussed above.

The site maneuverability is easy, enabling you to search images in an instant. But, you need to keep one thing in mind that most of the photos available on the site is from outdoor photography. The photos available on the site are all tagged and can be searched according to category or dominant color(I like this idea!).

7. Pixabay

Pixabay is another amazing site for sharing and finding images for your needs. All the images available on the site are under the license of Creative Commons public domain dee CCO.

Well, this clearly means that you can use the modify, copy, and distribute the images easily. The images can also be used for commercial purposes without showing any attribution.

Note: The site also contains Sponsored images from Shutterstock.

8. Flickr

Flickr is an amazing repository for stock and free images. They also provide most CC licensed images so that it can be used without author’s permission. Most of the images belong to the vintage category and are published in the public domain.

9. New Old Stock

The name itself speaks for the images, published on the site. The idea is simple; use old retro photos that are free from copyright use, and publish it to the public domain.

Anyone, who is looking for retro images can easily find this site useful.

10. Jay Mantri

Jay Mantri is an initiative from an individual who travels all around the world to take amazing photos. The site owner uploads photos every week.

The amazing thing about the photos is that they are free; available under the Common Creative license. Most of the images available under the site are photos of coastal scenes and outdoor city.

11. Jeshoots

Jeshoots is yet another amazing site for stock photos, offering all the images free of cost. You can find lots of images from almost all the categories possible, including categories such as food, animal, food and many more.

The site has unique search bar that can help you find images without much difficulty.

12. The Stocks

And when you think that there should be aggregator of all the aggregator of images, The Stocks fulfills your wish.

A unique idea to collect all the major websites and put it into one place; it completely improves the image finding experience of the users.

The site aggregates images from the popular site such as Unsplash, new old stock, startup stock, Jay Mantri and more.

Conclusion

We have gone through some amazing site, some of which mesmerized me, either by their functionality or uniqueness. All of the sites listed today are worthy of their place, but there are few websites that need special mention. They are unsplash, creative commons and The Stock. And one site, that brings the spirit of all the image sharing websites is The Stock, a sleek and intuitive way of presenting useful images to their users.