A Web journal of the best Graphics, Graphic Design, Web Design, & Digital Arts Sites on the Internet, as well as articles, reviews, and commentaries

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Free Images for Graphic Designers & Web Designers

Hello All. Today, our blog is about finding free stock photography & images on the Internet. We have compiled a large list of websites that allow you to use the images on their site for free. Most of the below resources, are large compilations of photos that are both searchable and browsable. If you can't afford to purchase stock photography, and you aren't a camera buff, then you are going to enjoy these links and hopefully bookmark this blog entry. Just always keep in mind that every single one of these sites have different licensing rules and regulations. Make sure to read each one carefully before using them on commercial projects. Some are okay for non-commercial use only, but most of these free images sites have no restrictions at all. So, always check before using these images.

WHAT DO THE WORDS 'FREE USE IMAGES' MEAN?

Free Use images could mean copyright-free / public domain images, or images where the photographer has given permission that the images can be used free of charge. This is a very tricky concept and you should always read the fine print on these 'Free Pictures' websites. Just so you know, when you see an image you like on the Internet, you aren't just allowed to right click on it / hit 'save as' and Whaalaa ... it is yours. It doesn't work this way. When you visit one of these 'free images' website, look for a reproduction rights page or statement of use page. Read this page carefully, and read the fine print to make sure that there are no limitations to their 'free images use'. Many of these 'free image' sites require that you post credit for the image, meaning that you must mention the photographer or website next to or below the free image. This is your only fee for using the image.

An example of a restriction to using a free image is as follows:

Free for Educational or Personal Use: You can use the image on your personal print projects, your website, in a school project, as desktop wallpaper, frame it and hang it on a wall. However, you cannot resell the image, or use it within one of your commercial projects, without paying for the right to do so.

Click on this Link For a list of articles about Stock Photography, Finding Free Images on the Internet, Royalty Free Images, and much more.

Now for the long list of Free Stock Photo Sites...Enjoy and please comment on sites that I have missed, and I will add them on. Thank you!

LINKS TO FREE ROYALTY FREE IMAGES SITES ON THE NET

AarinFreePhoto.com - These digital photo collections are free to use. Right now the galleries are a little limited, but they have over 950 images for you to choose from. More are being added.

AMG Media - Free Photos for you to use... All these digital photos (taken with Nikon Coolpix) are 72dpi. Click on the thumbnails below to see the larger version for use on your website. You may use any of the royalty free photos shown as long as you give credit to the photographer.

Art Favor - ArtFavor is the collection of vector and flash clipart, sounds, fonts, photos, pictures and images for designers, flash programmers and interested in creative web design

ARS Image Gallery - Search the Agricultural Image Gallery—along with our complete online catalog of more than 2,000 photo images.

Amazing Textures - A texture library with hundreds of free textures to download, high-resolution textures, images, backgrounds, wallpapers and texture maps. Check out our massive collection of Tiled Textures or see our users Top Textures.

Burning Well - BurningWell is a repository for public domain (free for any use) images. You are free to download, copy and use the photos you find here for any purpose. These free images were donated by photographers from around the world.

Big Foto - The royalty free photo agency offering free use of all pictures (with link or reference).

Buzz Net - Buzznet.com is a vibrant photo-sharing community. The site features an easy-to-use interface and powerful tools to create your own photoblog and start sharing your photos with your friends and meet friends from around the world.

Barry's Free Photos - Free Stock Photos.... Barry's Free Photos offers over 2300 FREE Stock Photos in several categories.

Creating Online - Free Stock Photos for Personal or Commercial Use...set up in a forum.

Cepolina - The album includes 3577 free photo available for download.

Creative Commons Search - Full copyright applies to most stuff on the web. But this search helps you find photos, music, text, and other works whose authors want you to re-use it for some uses -- without having to pay or ask permission.

Copyright Free Photo Archive - A Community-Indexed Photo Archive. The photo archive at Gimp-Savvy.com has more than 27,000 free photos and images, consisting of over 2.5 Gbytes of data. The goal is to make this archive a resource for collage and photo-montage using digital image editing techniques

DHD Multimedia Gallery - The Gallery is a selection of mainly real-world-derived stock photography, clip-art, sounds and video clips, for use in Web design, your PC screen wallpaper, etc. Gallery content has been used on many Web sites, but also on book covers, TV caption cards, music videos, leaflets and school projects to name a few! Download for your free personal and commercial use, though please read the terms and conditions.

Free Photographs - The Free Photographs Network is an online resource for royalty-free stock photographs for non-commercial use.

Free Digital Photos - Free pictures for websites, newsletters and documents etc. For commercial and non-commercial use. There is no registration required or forms to fill in. Hundreds more photos are being added each month. The photos are web quality and are intended for web designers, or for use in any document, newsletter or presentation."

Free Images and Stock Photos - more than 2500 original stock photos all for Free!

Free Photos Dot Com - Designers: Do you need free stock photos for your website, brochure or design work? FreePhotos.com is your answer. Free to download, no link back and no credit required.

Free Photos Bank - A nice looking site which has free stock photography and is searchable and browsable.

Free Stock Photos Dot Com - Download free photos for your personal/commercial design projects.

Free Media Goo - Free, Royalty Free, Really Free!

GeekPhilosopher - GeekPhilosopher's stock photo, background, and desktop wallpaper collection. These quality images are free to use.

Free Stock Photos - Free Photography for Personal or Commercial use.

Free Foto - FreeFoto.com is the largest collection of free photographs for private non-commercial use on the Internet.

From Old Books - Scanned Images, Engravings and Pictures From Old Books.

Holy Land Photos - Free Hi-Res Photographs of the Holdy Lands.

Image Base - Free Stock Photography in categories Nature / Outdoor, People, City, & Concept / Object.

Image After - Image After is a large online free photo collection. You can download and use any image or texture from our site and use it in your own work, either personal or commercial.

Lycos Image Gallery - Over 10,000 Images to use for free.

Morgue File - A place to keep post production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file. This morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.

Majestic Imagery - Free Royalty Free Stock Photographs - for all your graphic needs. All that is needed is a link back if you use them on a web page project.

Pics4Learning - Copyright-Friendly Images for Education...but I doubt that you 'have' to use them for only educational projects...check for more information on the site.

Pixel Perfect Digital - Large Image Archive full of free photos and images to use on your blog, on your website, in your graphic design projects, etc. They also have a Photography Blog

PD Photo - PDPhoto.org is a repository for free public domain photos. Unless something is clearly marked as being copyrighted, you can assume it is free to use.

Photo Rogue - Has Google Images ever let you down? You looked long and hard for a photograph of something, and never found it? That's where PhotoRogue.com comes in. You can request a picture of anything you want, and volunteer photographers will go out and attempt to actually take the picture you want. It's entirely free, although we don't guarantee that your request will ever be filled.

PixelBag - Not in English, But these are free images that if used need to give credit to the Photographer.

PhotoCase - Photos from this site may be used for commercial and noncommercial self-contained original work. You can download up to three photos per day. If you need to download more, the site requires buying download credits through its shopping section.

Picture Station - 5000 Pictures online! More than 4GB of fine pictures available and are free.

Piotr.Pix - An image database providing free high-quality images with 934 items in the collection.

Stock Xchng - Browse through the categories of our huge gallery containing over 170.000 quality stock photos by more than 10.000 users! Need a wallpaper for your desktop? Need a pic for your commercial website design? Looking for inspiration? Have a look around.

Stock Vault - Download High Quality Stock Photos, Textures, and other images completely free.

UnProfound - This collection of photos is for anyone to use in just about any way they'd like. You may NOT, however, redistribute these photos individually or en masse, as photos, to any other websites or offline buyers. The photos themselves are still the intellectual property of their respective owners.

Visipix - A repository of over 100,000 Fine Art and Photo Museum Pictures. These are Free to use, but your need to credit VisiPix and the artist.

Woophy - Woophy has a collection of over 23,000 photos from around the world and over 4300 cities are represented.

Yellowstone National Park - Over 9,000 image digital slide files of Yellowstone National Park with captions is now online.

YotoPhoto - Yotophoto is the first internet search engine for finding free-to-use stock photographs and images. Now indexing over 150 000 Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other free images

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