Free Online Image Banks

Description

This article has been modified from Where to Find Free Images and Visuals for My Blog by Robin Good.

Robin Good:

"Finding quality images and photos to complement an important article, essay, or news report is already a challenge in itself. Imagine, then, when the goal is not only to find good images, but also ones you can use without having to pay royalties or purchase one-time publishing rights.

The task would seem, at first, a challenging one, especially since, until recently, there were few well-known free image resources available online. Today, however, new ones are popping up all over the Web, offering a great assortment of quality pictures and presenting an alternative to traditional, expensive stock-photography libraries.

As long as you don't require photos of artistic masterpieces or images of popular celebrities, you are likely to find highly interesting, affordable visual alternatives by exploring the world of free and grassroots online image banks.

Remember, too, to always check the licensing terms of any image you wish to use (for more information about permissions, see TechSoup's article Borrowing Images from the Web: An FAQ.) And no matter what your source, always try to credit the artist, and, when possible, send a link. This is an easy way to thank someone who has been so generous as to offer her creative work to you for free, and allows the artist to link back to your site to show potential customers how her work has been used."

Examples

Modified from Robin Good:

Bigfoto.com is a repository of photos whose main categories include America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Pacific. When you select a category, a menu with a list of subcategories appears below it; selecting a subcategory will take you a page with thumbnails and information about the topic. For example, Themes > Aviation leads you to a page with aviation photos, as well as a description of the Wright brothers and Charles Lindbergh.

Geek Philosopher offers a collection of photos, backgrounds, and wallpaper organized into nine main categories, each with additional subcategories. If you use an image, the site requires you to include a link to Geek Philosopher. According to the site, you are free to do whatever you want with these photos except redistribute them. (Learn more by checking out the site's terms and conditions.)

Fotogenika.net contains photos sorted into a handful of categories and subcategories. Images from this site "may be used freely for personal, educational, and nonprofit projects. You may not use them commercially, claim authorship, and/or sell them."

FreeImages.co.uk has more than 2,500 stock photos. The home page lists the top three galleries; you can search for photos by gallery or by using the gallery index page's search tool. When you select a thumbnail from the gallery page, the picture appears in its full size and without information.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net has over 2,000 free images for use in commercial and non-commercial work as long as you don't claim them as your own, redistribute them, or offer them for sale.

FreePhotosBank grants visitors a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use its images.

Free Stock Photos is a collection of free photos available for use in personal and commercial design projects (see the terms of use for guidelines). Images come in multiple sizes for downloading.

FreeMediaGoo has a collection of royalty-free images, audio, textures, and Flash animation available for commercial and private use (with some restrictions) free of charge. It is not necessary to credit the images you use. Images are sorted by category, including beach, aviation, buildings, finance, sports, foods, and others. You can find original and awe-inspiring digital images in the site's digital factory category.

From Old Books is a unique collection of over 800 images in the public domain (unless otherwise noted) scanned from books. The site has many pictures of castles, abbeys, and old houses. The home page displays new images and a search tool with various sorting options.

ImageBase is a collection of over a few hundred photos of nature, people, cities, and objects taken by (presumably) one photographer, David Niblack. Though a small database in comparison to others, you can expect to find quality photos here. The site clearly states that "all images are 100 percent free to use." Click on one of the categories to view thumbnails; after clicking on a thumbnail, the full image appears on the right. If you click on the full image, it takes you to the next image in that category.

Image*After is a free online photo collection. Download and use any image or "texture" --- close-ups of elements such as fur, food, and fabrics, and more --- from the site to use in personal or commercial work (see the site's terms of use for licensing information). A series of drop-down menus let you browse images and textures by category; you can also look for images via a search feature.

Mayang's Free Textures is a library of over 3,000 textures from architecture, buildings, fabric, man-made items, metal, nature, plants, stone, and wood. Images are high resolution at 1600x1200 pixels or larger, with most at 2560x1920 pixels.

MorgueFile contains free, high-resolution digital stock photographs and reference images for corporate or public use. The official purpose of MorgueFile is to provide free image reference materials for all creative pursuits.

MorgueFile's archive contains over 55,000 digital images, which can be searched and accessed through a broad set of well-organized categories, including animals, objects, people, and scenes, all via a simple, quick interface.

National Park Service has about 13,000 images available in the public domain for use, free of charge as long as you credit the photo as "NPS Photo" or "NPS Photo by (photographer's name)."

The Open Photo Project is a stock photography community and framework whose purpose is to allow photographers to share and protect their works through Creative Commons licensing. Mousing over the thumbnails allows you to view each photo's licensing information.

PD Photo.org is a repository for free public-domain photos. It contains about 2,000 photographs --- most of them by the same photographer --- organized by category.

Photocase contains a repository of photos and a community that includes forums, polls, buddy lists, and user profiles. (The site was formerly located at Photocase.de, so check your bookmarks to make sure they're up-to-date.)

Photo Rogue has a unique concept: If you can't find a picture you need, submit a request to Photo Rogue and they'll try to fulfill it. Before submitting a request, review the guidelines. The service is free and relies on volunteer photographers; you can read more about the usage terms in the Volunteering FAQ. The site also offers an RSS feed to notify you when new images are posted.

Pixel Perfect Digital offers more than 4,000 images sorted into 146 categories, free for commercial and non-commercial use. The newest files appear on the gallery home page; a random selection of other images appears at the bottom of the page. You can stay on top of the newest files by subscribing to Pixel Perfect Digital's RSS feed.

One of the best resources of free images online is Stock XChng, which includes an impressive collection of high-quality photos taken by amateur photographers from around the world. In fact, you too can be one of the many contributors to this outstanding and fast-growing image clearinghouse by submitting your own photographs to the site.

Stockvault is a stock photography resource that offers medium-sized images for personal and non-commercial use. The site features images from various photographers, both professional and amateur, and offers an impressive array of awe-inspiring shots.

Unprofound.com is a collection of photos sorted by basic colors instead of the usual categories. White, however, isn't white, but rather is found under the "everything else" category.

Visipix is an art museum, clip art, and photo gallery with around 100,000 exhibits. If you publish a Vispix photo, the site requires that you credit the authors and Vispix near the photo. All images are free, but can't be used in the sex industry or to promote the sale of tobacco or alcohol.

Woophy has a collection of over 23,000 photos from around the world, with over 4,300 cities represented. You can search by city, highest-rated photos, country, category keywords, or member to find photos. The categories are animals, culture, landmarks and buildings, nature, objects, and people. You can also limit the search results by date and number of views.

Picsearch is a search engine that uses its own technology to crawl the Web and index images. If you find an image through Picsearch, check the site's licensing terms or contact the copyright holder to see if you have permission to use it. (Picsearch also provides information on how you can prevent your pictures from appearing in its search results.)

Yotophoto searches multiple photo collection sites for free images. It may be a good starting point when you're looking for something specific. (For example, the tool found 351 images for the word apple.) Enter a keyword into the search box and the results display thumbnails along with copyright information, size, and source; a new feature even allows you to search images by color.