Whatever content that you create online or elsewhere, it’s critically important that the images you use grab attention, but also give context and meaning too.
They also need to be sharp, high resolution and look professional enough to gain you brand authority
However, unless you’re a pro photographer, most of us don’t have a huge cache of images of this calibre that we can just dip in to, attach and publish.
You could be a little cheeky and google right click an image and use, but remember, every image out there is copyrighted, even lobster tanned sausage leg selfies. So you could potentially find yourself getting an angry email/dm or call with a disgruntled owner of the image. Or worse still finding yourself neck deep in a copyright infringement claim.
Always ensure you have permission from the copyright owner before you use any image that is not yours or that the image has a Public Domain licence. A Public Domain licence is given to materials that are ‘free from intellectual property laws, meaning there are no laws that restrict use or any permissions necessary.
“Well, what do I do?” you say.
5 ways to make money from photography
(Trumpets blow)
Introducing the five best known platforms for ‘royalty free images’ That’s right, there are sites out there that not only have a huge library of awesome images of almost everything you can think of, but yes, you can use totally free too. All the site owners and photographers ask is that you give them a tag or plug when you use the images.
Can you say fairer than that?… That’s what I thought
So without further ado, here are the top 5 sites for royalty free images that I researched for this post and I’ve included excerpts of reviews applicable to each one.
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- Unsplash (My fave actually )
‘According to Unsplash, they publish every 10 days 10 royalty-free pictures with which you can do everything because they are also under CC0 and therefore license-free for all projects. The pictures are really very high quality and well selected. The database of royalty-free images is also nicely sorted and helps to find the right stock photos quickly.’
‘Great platform that offers hand-picked royalty-free images under the Creative Commons Zero license agreement, also called CC0. This means that the images can be used for personal and business purposes without attribution, i.e. mentioning an author, etc. The great search function of the site also allows you to quickly find the desired image.’
‘Pikwizard gives you access to high-quality free stock photography and videos. You can also take each image and edit it on their own graphic design tool. There’s no attribution required, meaning you can take each image and use it as you please for commercial and non-commercial use.’
‘Vecteezy has a large library of images. Although only some of them are really free, it’s worth to have a look here. The team has strict quality controls when uploading and the collections are also very usable. Please also pay special attention to the usage rights here, as it is worth reading carefully before using the images here.
Here you can find many images that you can also use for free and it is also worthwhile to search this image database.’
‘The stock photos on the website come from a pool of photographers who provide free and royalty-free images from their arsenal of stock photos. Slowly the community around the site is also being built up, providing additional content. The goal is to provide really good and very high-resolution images.’
So I hope this has been helpful. Let me know what you think below and please share
1 thought on “Top Five Royalty Free Image Platforms”
Very useful 👌🏼
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