Twelve Places to Find Images for Your Website (2024)

Last Updated on January 3, 2023 by Kevin Muldoon 90 Comments

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Blog / Resources / Twelve Places to Find Images for Your Website

Images have become a vital component of online content over the last ten years. This is partly due to the increase in internet speeds and partly due to the rise in popularity of sharing content on social media services. From a reading perspective, images are important as they break up long articles and make it easier to digest information.

Finding images for posts on Elegant Themes has not been difficult for me as I have been reviewing a lot of plugins and services. Therefore, I have been using screenshot images. With many other topics, a screenshot cannot be used; however it is still important to include relevant images where possible.

One of the stumbling points for many website owners is the uncertainty over whether an image can be used or not. It’s understandable as no one wants to receive a bill and a threatening letter from a large stock image company.

You should therefore avoid searching for images using tools such as Google Images, as many of the images that you will find through the service have been used illegally. Do not be fooled into thinking an image is safe to use as many others have been using it. It is no guarantee that the owner of the image will not contact you about using the image illegally.

Let us take a quick look at the most common licenses that you will see for images:

Public Domain – Images in which the intellectual property rights have expired or images in which the owner has released them to the public domain free of charge. They can therefore be used in any way you see fit.
Creative Commons – Can be one of several available licenses. Some licenses allow you to use and share the image if it is unchanged, whilst others require a credit link to be displayed. It is important that you read the Creative Commons license that an image has before using it on your website.
Royalty-Free – Do not let the name fool you, Royalty-Free does not mean that an image can be used free. It means that once you have purchased the image, you can use it as many times as you want. That is, you do not pay a royalty every time you use the image.
Rights-Managed – This allows the image to be used a limited number of times. If you want to use the image more than the defined amount, you will need to pay for the privilege.

There are many other image licenses that are used online. My advice to all of you is that if you are unsure about whether an image can be used, do not use it until you have emailed the owner of the image, or service selling it, and clarify how the image can be used.

In this article, I would like to share with you twelve places online which you can use to find images for your blog or website.

Table Of Contents

11. Flickr
22. Public Domain Pictures
33. FreeFoto
44. DeviantArt
55. Pixabay
66. Wikimedia Commons
77. Creative Commons Search
88. Stock.xchng
99. PhotoDune
1010. PhotoRack
1111. GettyImages
1212. ShutterStock

1. Flickr

Several billion images have been uploaded to Flickr since it launched in 2004 (yes, I said billions!). A large percentage of these images have been released under the Creative Commons Attribution license. This means that the images can be used on your website as long as you give the original photographer credit.

Flickr also have a large archive of public domain images. Known as The Commons, the catalog hopes to become the world’s public photography archives.

Flickr have a huge archive or high quality images. Many images can be used if you display a credit link in ret.

2. Public Domain Pictures

A wide collection of public domain images. Although the images are free to use, some restrictions do exist for commercial users, so be sure to check the usage conditions for each image.

Public Domain Pictures has thousands of photographs to choose from.

3. FreeFoto

A free photo archive that contains over 130,000 images. A link back to the image is required in order to use them.

You can use FreeFoto images as long as you display an attribution link.

4. DeviantArt

With over thirty million registered users, DeviantArt is one of the largest communities online for artists and photographers.

Some artists allow their items to be used if you link back to their profile. You can search for these images through Google using “This work is licensed under a Creative Commons” site:deviantart.com. You can also find suitable images at creative-commons.deviantart.com.

DeviantArt has many unique illustrations and photographs.

5. Pixabay

A directory of free public domain photographs, vectors and drawings. All images are of a high quality and no attribution link is required in order to use them.

Pixabay is a great resource for public domain pictures.

6. Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons is one of my favorite places to find images for blog posts. Owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, it hosts over twenty million images and media files. The quality of images is generally high.

All Wikipedia images are stored on Wikimedia Commons.

7. Creative Commons Search

The Creative Commons organisation has a fantastic search tool that lets you search resources such as Flickr, Fotopedia, Open Clip Art Library and Pixabay. It is the best way of finding suitable Creative Commons images.

One of the best ways of finding images that are licensed under the Creative Commons license.

8. Stock.xchng

Owned by Getty Images, Stock.xchng is a free stock image directory that contains over 400,000 photographs and illustrations. The standard of images varies from poor to high, therefore you sometimes need to spend a little time to find the right photo.

Stock.xchng has a large collection of free stock images.

9. PhotoDune

Photodune is an affordable stock image solution from Envato that has a collection of over four and a half million images. Like all stock image services, the price of the image depends on its size. Small images of around five hundred pixels in width only cost one dollar.

PhotoDune is a great place to find high quality images at at a fair price.

10. PhotoRack

A large directory of free stock images. It contains hundreds of thousands of photographs, textures, and wallpapers.

PhotoRack is a good place to find nature photos, city photos, backgrounds and textures.

11. GettyImages

With over eighty million photos in their archives, GettyImages can claim to be the largest stock image service online. Earlier this month they made thirty five million images available to bloggers. All you have to do is click on the embed icon and then paste the code into your post or page.

Getty Images has every type of image you can imagine.

12. ShutterStock

ShutterStock is a royalty-free image service that offers over thirty million images and vectors. Subscriptions are available that allow you to download a set number of images per day. Alternatively, you can pay for a package of images.

ShutterStock has a good collection of photographs, vectors and illustrations.

If you found this article useful, I encourage you to subscribe to the Elegant Themes for free updates on our latest posts.

Please let us know what resource you use for images in the comment area below 🙂

Article thumbnail image by YuryImaging / shutterstock.com

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90 Comments

andrewang January 16, 2016
Thank you very much Kevin! Great resource for us!
Reply
Christian Day May 29, 2015
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the article it was very helpful. I realize I am late to the party but there is another site that has been great to use: http://www.episcura.com. They have a free account available, all their images are eligible for the free account except the HDRI and the interface is great! Good selection of textures and some stock photography at high rez, and I have noticed it grows every week. Definitely worth checking out!
Reply
Tom Investeren April 17, 2015
pixabay.com works fine for me. But I think that DeviantArt is even better… I realized that thanks to this blog. Thank you for sharing!
Cheers,
Tom
Reply
Laurie Marshall December 10, 2014
Great info! I’m sharing with the Arkansas Women Bloggers group I’m a member of – we write great words, but don’t always know where to find great photos to go with them. 🙂
Reply
Kevin November 9, 2014
Very nice suggestions! I like https://www.stormythoughts.com/ because of the image resizer you only pay for the size of image you need.
Reply
Martin Novak July 3, 2014
Thanks for the list! Another awesome resource of free high-quality images is http://albumarium.com (fairly new website, just about a month old)
Reply
Stephanie June 5, 2014
Thank you for your article !!! but what type of licence can allow a web designer to use and include an image in an html template and sell this template (like your themes for example) ?
Reply
Aqib Shahzad May 20, 2014
Flickr is the best source for finding free images for your blog articles.Apart from this I also use PhotoPin,FreeDigitalPhotos and Fotolia etc. The websites mentioned in this list are also useful 🙂
Reply
[emailprotected] April 23, 2014
Also check out http://www.goodfreephotos.com for thousands of free public domain photos classified by location. Appreciate it very much if you would add the resource to your list. Thanks.
Reply
Name * April 7, 2014
Thank you this is so useful! I’ve also used :
http://www.ipernity.com/
Beautiful images from around the globe!
Reply
Kevin Muldoon April 3, 2014
I’m overwhelmed by all the positive responses.
I’m really pleased with how everyone is making more suggestions for good image resources. Ultimately, it is not possible to list every great resource in an article like this, and there are always good resources that are missed during the research stage.
Thanks guys 🙂
Reply
Michelle March 30, 2014
http://www.canstockphoto.com I find good
Reply
Charles M March 30, 2014
Or you can simply search for alternatives. There are several stock photo agencies with ready-made high quality and above all -legal images that can be used by all bloggers or websites builders users who are willing to pay a decent price for them. One of these agencies is yayimages.com which has a great unlimited streaming service at only $9.90/month. So far it has been the perfect solution for me.
Reply
Jonathan March 29, 2014
Awesome! Thanks so much for the post, I’ll never be at a loss for a good photo again!
Reply
Paul March 28, 2014
One of my favorites is http://unsplash.com! Completely and totally royalty free pics, which they encourage people to use wherever they want; however they want.
Reply
Gary Smith March 28, 2014
I was just adding up the expense of purchasing fotolia.com images for a series of five books we’re publishing in print (about 50 images) — and it’s an expense for us, since we’re the publishers. With a few of the sites on this list, I was able to cut my expenses by about 2/3. Thanks for this great resource, and for all the links provided by commenters!
Reply

Kevin Muldoon April 3, 2014
You’re welcome Gary. Glad you found it useful. 🙂
Reply

Sheryl March 27, 2014

Do you know… Is it ok to put the credit & link-back in the rollover (img title or alt-text), or does it have to be an always & immediately visible credit? I’ve always been curious, but haven’t found anything. Thanks!

Kevin Muldoon April 3, 2014
There has to be a credit link somewhere in the text. I imagine placing it in the alt text will be perceived as hiding it.
I personally don’t see a problem with giving credit. It’s a small price to pay for a good image. Plus all the top websites do it 🙂
Reply

jombts March 27, 2014

Thanks for the given info. Its very useful.

Tamhas March 27, 2014

What about the plugin “Flickr Pick a Picture”?
https://wordpress.org/plugins/flickr-pick-a-picture/

“Lets you pick a Creative Commons picture from Flickr and use it anywhere you want on your WordPress installation. The plugin will maintain attribution to the original Flickr author to keep peace with the CC Attribution License”

I use it all the time for filler pics… there’s some nice ones too!

60Mg-Tadalista.Blogspot.Com March 26, 2014

Great points totally, you just acquired a logo brand new reader. What can a person propose in terms of this post which you designed at times in the past? Any kind of particular?

Kevin Muldoon April 3, 2014
Sorry, I am not 100% sure what you are asking. Can you clarify your question for me 🙂
Reply

Sietse March 26, 2014

Great resources! Didn’t know most of these actually, have always just been using Flickr and Wikimedia Commons.

Thanks! Will definitely be usefull

Donna March 25, 2014

What a wonderful resource! Thanks so much. I am often worried about the legality of using photos and now I know what is allowed.

Kevin Muldoon April 3, 2014
Glad you found it useful Donna 🙂
Reply

Elijah Lovkoff March 25, 2014

Thanks Kevin. Stock.xchng has degraded significantly in the last year in my opinion. Pixabay – is a great resource, thanks, didn’t know about it.

Kevin Muldoon April 3, 2014
No problem Elijah. I appreciate you sharing more useful links with others 🙂
Reply
Reuel Edgar March 26, 2014
Great resources, thanks so much for these links. I’ve already started looking at all of them.
Question – the divi demo page has an animated background (which is totally cool, btw) but I wanted to know if anyone knew where I might find other animated backgrounds that are optimized for web use?
I’ve found a few sites with animated backgrounds but their file sizes are all around 50mb.
Reply

Elijah Lovkoff March 25, 2014

I’ll probably throw in another one. This is the site where I place my own photography. You can have the pics for free, no attribution is required, I know it’s a pain, and breaks the design sometimes. (But if you provide some, it would be nice of course) Write me an e-mail if you want some pics from this site (I’ll send them for free, even though it has a price tag on the site.)
http://artandstock.com/

I also started posting new free pics in by blog: http://skylark-studio.com/web-design-and-travel/
(Just hit FREE IMAGES category. I will be posting much more, just a bit busy at the moment)

jabber March 25, 2014

I love http://www.photoxpress.com/

Boris March 25, 2014

Hint for Flickr to search for CC pictures only: Submit a search with your keyword and then klick on the advanced search button in the right upper corner. Scroll down and check all 3 boxes. Search again, now you see pictures you really can use. But don’t forget to mention flickr and photograph on your site.

ram March 25, 2014

very useful link for my feature work…….thank you

JP Julpe March 25, 2014

Very useful article – thank you. For our German friends I have on my webSite a similar article. This I will complement with your information. Have fun today.