Best Free Stock Image Websites for Designers

Master the key principles of good design to ensure your work is beautiful and original. Start taking your own photos or illustrating your work, so the design stands apart from generic design concepts.

Strong visual quality is important especially if you want to stand out from your peers in design contests. Your clients will instantly take notice if your work shows an eye for rich, high-quality images. If you’re a time-poor designer with a hectic project schedule, sometimes you may have to use stock imagery. Thankfully, if you know where to look there are an abundance of free images of superb quality available for you to use.

Image licensing basics

Creative Commons CCO – “You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.”

Most stock images fall into two categories. The first is a Public Domain Classification means no one owns the image and it’s free to use. If you want to modify an image that falls under Creative Common License, you need to double-check that its license allows you to do so.

Tip: Be respectful of registered trademarks and brands appearing in your imagery. E.g., Avoid imagery using an Apple laptop as you can’t claim it’s yours.

For royalty-free stock images using a Creative Commons Attributions 2.0 license, you can copy, modify and distribute the images but you must attribute the image author/owner.

Best stock websites

Want to find the perfect photo for your project ASAP? Look no further. This list highlights 30 best free stock image websites, starting from easy navigation, searchability with free licenses to websites that feature more advanced search tools.