Images are an incredibly important part of blogging. They enhance blog posts by brightening up articles or breaking up long pieces of content to make it easier for readers to digest the information.
Since Post Thumbnails were introduced to WordPress 2 years ago images have been even more common place on WordPress powered websites (on WP Mods we use post thumbnails for displaying an image in archives and in recent post lists).
Matt Cody emailed us yesterday asking if we could write an article which showed the best places to find images for your blog posts, which was the inspiration for today’s post. I will showing you 65 places where you can find images for your blog posts.
Stock Images For WordPress Blogs
Stock image websites offer thousands and sometimes millions of images. The vast majority of stock image services offer royalty-free images and higher quality commercial images. All images, free and premium, usually come with rules for using the image.
For example, some free images are free to use on personal websites but cost money if you are going to use the image on a commercial website. Royalty-free images can cost anything from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars though once you have purchased the image you can use it as many times as you want (i.e. you don’t have to pay a royalty fee every time you use it).
Nearly all images have a restriction where they can’t be used on pornographic or hate websites and can’t be used as part of website logos or trademarks etc.
Just remember to check the terms and conditions of using an image from a stock image service before using it on your website.
1. Stock.Xchng
One of the largest free stock image services on the web with over 350,000 free images available.
A stock image search engine that lists millions of photos from many sources.
3. StockVault
An image resource with over 27,000 free images.
A huge collection of high quality images. Photographers are rewarded for giving away their images for free by getting a share of ad revenue.
5. Free Images
A collection of over 6,000 free images.
Over 5,000 free images which you can use on personal or commercial websites.
7. Photo Laboratory
With close to half a million images currently available and 10,000 more added every month, Photo Laboratory is a great place to search for images for your blog posts.
8. Image After
A large collection of images and textures.
9. Pixel Perfect Digital
Thousands of photos, illustrations and digital art.
10. Deposit Photos
Millions of royal free and premium stock images. A 7 day free trial exists for premium images with subscription plan costs depending on how long you want the membership for and how many images you want to download per day.
11. FreeFoto
A collection of over 130,000 free photographs organised into thousands of categories.
12. Diwiesign Studio
A collection of dirty industrial style images and textures that are free to download.
13. Photo Rack
Thousands of photos which are free to download.
14. MorgueFile
A large free public image archive.
15. DreamsTime
A popular service that has over 12 million royalty-free images to choose from.
A great resource for photos of celebrities.
17. iStockPhoto
One of the largest stock image resource websites on the web.
A great free resource that has over a quarter of a million images, royalty-free stock photos and illustrations to choose from.
19. RGB Stock
Free graphics, illustrations and photographs for your blog posts.
20. Geek Philosopher
A collection of digital images that is free for personal and commercial usage.
A useful resource that has thousands of free images, icons and backgrounds.
22. Vecteezy
Free and premium vector art, icons, patterns and more.
23. Free Stock Photos
24. Trip Album
Beautiful photographs from around the world.
25. Jupiter Images
A stock photography service that has over 2.5 million images to choose from.
26. Cepolina photo
A free photo archive about travel and nature.
27. Stock Fuel
Thousands of quality royalty-free images from as low as $1.
28. Free Pixels
A stock image website that offers a few thousand images for free.
29. Fotolia
Fotlia has around 15 million images in its archives. Images start from only $0.75.
30. Free Image Files
A collection of just over 1,000 random images.
31. Free Photos Bank
An archive of free images that are split into numerous categories.
32. PhotoEverywhere
Over 3,000 free travel stock images to choose from.
A free stock image service that has over 10,000 images to choose from.
Over 10,000 public domain images that have no copyright.
35. Alamy
With over 25 million images to choose from, Alamy claims to be the largest stock image website on the web. Images can be purchased directly so you don’t have to worry about any unused credits that you purchased going to waste.
A forum with a few thousand stock images to choose from.
37. Clip Art
A subscription based service that has over 130,000 professional-quality photos and stock images to choose from.
38. Photo Vaco
Thousands of free photos, vectors and brushes.
39. ShutterStock
One of the most commercially successful stock image services on the web, ShutterStock has over 16 million quality images to choose from.
40. Dougit Design
High resolution images, textures, backgrounds and Photoshop PSD files.
41. FotoSearch
A stock photography website that sells high quality images.
42. Kave Wall
A collection of free images, art and backgrounds.
43. 123RF
Offering over 10 million royalty-free stock photographs.
44. Pic Findr
A search engine that searches for free stock photography images on the web.
45. PD Photo
Thousands of public domain images to choose from.
46. Toasto
Free photographs, backgrounds and textures.
47. David Niblack ImageBase
A varied gallery of free images.
48. PhotoRee
A useful image search service that lets you filter images by the type of license they were released as.
50. PhotoDune
A new stock image website from Envato that offers images from as as low as one dollar.
51. Photogen
A random collection of free stock images.
52. Nations Illustrated
Free stock images from around the world.
53. Free Artistic Photos
A range of free photographs from photographer Husac Lucian.
54. OpenPhoto
A large collection of free stock images.
A large collection of historical images that are now available to the public domain for free.
56. Veer
Royalty-free stock images, fonts and illustrations at competitive prices.
57. Acobox
Free animal and nature related pictures.
58. Unprofound
Lots of free images from a range of photographers.
59. StockLib
Over 11 million royalty-free stock images from as low as $1.
60. YAY Micro
An online marketplace for affordable high quality images.
61. Corbis Images
Royalty-free images, virtual CDs, illustrations and much more. Corbis also run specialised image resource wesites sucg as the Middle Eastern image service Arabian Eye.
62. Epictura
Over 11 million royalty-free stock images from only $1.
63. Big Stock Photo
9 million vectors and images available from around $2.99 each.
64. Visco Images
High quality stock images from only $0.80.
65. Getty Images
One of the most well known stock photography services in the world.
66. CreStock
High quality images, vectors and illustrations from only $1.
67. CanStockPhoto
A popular stock image service that has over 5 million photos. Credits start from only $0.40.
68. Glow Images
A premium provider of royalty-free and rights managed images. Over 15 million images to choose from.
Thousands of high quality stock illustrations from only $20.
70. ThinkStock
Millions of photos, vectors and illustrations to choose from. You can purchase packs of images for a set number of downloads or choose a monthly or yearly subscription option.
71. Reflex Stock
A stock photography website with over 10 million stock images, vectors and illustrations.
72. IzmoStock
One of the largest collections of car stock images on the web.
73. WeatherPix
Right managed image collections that focus on the weather and nature.
74. Aarin
Around 1,000 images that are free to download.
75. Mayang
Over 4,000 free textures and images.
76. PhotoCase
A stock photography website with over 200,000 images. Prices start from around $2 per image.
77. PixMac
A picture market with around 275,000 stock images to choose from. Prices start from around $1 per image and increase in cost depending on the size.
78. Photos
Royalty-free images starting from only $1.99 per single image. There are over 2.6 million images to choose from.
79. PunchStock
A stock photography search engine that searches over 85 stock image services.
80. VivoZoom
A stock photography service that guarantees that all images are legally safe to download. Stock image prices start from only $0.22.
81. PhotoSpin
Over 26 million images to choose from. You can purchase images individually, in a download pack or on a subscription basis.
82. BigFoto
Free images from around the world.
83. Vectorious
14,000+ royalty-free stock vector images which are available through a variety of different membership plans.
84. FeaturePics
Images and clip art from around $1 each.
85. Inmagine
Royalty-free stock image service.
86. Matton Images
Over 1.4 million value and premium images to choose from.
87. TurboPhoto
A large stock image archive that lets you download small and medium image files for free. Higher resolution images cost $9.
88. CSA Images
Beautiful and unique illustrations that will help your posts stand out from the crowd.
89. OceanStockImages
Beautiful photographs from the ocean from Ethan Daniels.
90. Texture King
Free texture stock images for the perfect background image.
91. Amazing Textures
A texture resource that offers the first 20mb of downloads for free.
Photo Sharing & Image Galleries
The following websites and services contain images that were submitted by members or indexed by a search engine. As such it is prudent to include a credit link for any images that you use from these sources and contact the image owner to ask if they mind you using their image on your blog post.
92. Woophy
Woophy, AKA WOrld Of PHotographY, is a free service that lets users upload their images and art online.
93. Deviant Art
One of the largest online social network for artists, Deviant Art is a great resource for images, backgrounds, textures, patterns and icons.
94. Google Images
One of the most popular places for bloggers to find images. A good place to find generic images for blog posts though make sure to get permission first if the image is unique.
95. ShutterCal
A photo community where members upload one photo a day.
96. Flickr
The most popular photo sharing website on the web is a great place to find unique photos for your blog posts. There is a creative commons section for images that are free to use. Try the WP Flickr and PhotoDropper WordPress plugins for an easier way of inserting photos into your posts and pages.
97. Zooomr
A good resource for random images. The type of license for each image is noted at the side of each post.
98. BuzzNet
Great looking photographs from the BuzzNet community.
99. PhotoRogue
It doesn’t seem to have been updated since the start of the year though I wanted to include this site in this list as it’s a great idea. The premise of PhotoRogue is simple. A member who is looking for a specific type of photo details what they need and community members upload pictures that they think may be appropriate.
If you don’t get a response at PhotoRogue; why not ask your Twitter or Facebook friends for help 🙂
A fantastic search option that lets you search creative common friendly images and content from a range of different locations.
Last but not least….
A simple concept that a lot of bloggers have forgot about!
101. Take your own Photos!
If you use the web to source your blog post images regularly, you may forget that one of the best options is to take pictures for your blog posts yourself. Most bloggers have a digital camera at their disposal and certainly have a mobile phone which has a camera feature so you have no excuse. It’s simply a matter of taking a related picture for your blog post and uploading it to your website.
Alternatively, why not create your own unique images using an image program such as Photoshop or Gimp. All you need to do is use one or more stock images and add a great looking font for your image title.
I hope you find this list useful. If you know of any other great places to find images for blog posts, please feel free to share them in the comment area.
Thanks,
Kevin