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In the era of information overload and clip thinking, the visual component of content is playing an increasingly important role. According to research, articles with relevant images receive 94% more views than those without pictures. And social media posts with photos and videos generate 180% more engagement.
High-quality images help to attract the audience's attention, convey the right emotions, and simplify the perception of information. They are indispensable in landing page design, email newsletters, presentations, and advertising creatives. But where do you get these images if you have a limited budget or need to prepare a "yesterday's" material?
Creating unique visual content (photos, illustrations, infographics) on your own is expensive and time-consuming. Searching for images on Google or simply copying them from other sites is risky from a copyright perspective. The ideal solution in this situation is to use free photo stocks.
Photostocks (also known as photobanks, microstocks, stock sites) are online services where photographers, illustrators, and videographers post their work. These are huge libraries of photos, vector graphics, videos, and other visual assets on any topic.
Photo stocks can be paid (Shutterstock, iStock, Getty Images) and free. On paid stocks, you can buy the image you need for a fixed fee or by subscription. Free stocks allow you to download content without payment and use it in your projects under certain conditions.
Key tasks solved by free photo stocks for digital professionals:
At the same time, it's important to understand that free comes at a price. Stock images can be used by your competitors, so it's hard to create a truly unique design. In addition, such photos often depict "too perfect" models and staged scenes, which does not look very authentic.
Nevertheless, the benefits of free photo banks definitely outweigh their disadvantages. Especially if you learn how to choose the right images and combine them with other types of content.
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Let's say you've found the perfect photo for your blog cover or social media post. Is it enough to just download it and upload it to your website? Not quite. First, it's important to understand the conditions under which the author of the image allows it to be used. To do this, you need to understand the types of licenses that are used on photo stocks.
Most free photo banks operate on the basis of Creative Commons (CC) public licenses. These are ready-made legal tools that authors can use to transfer some of their rights to the general public.
The CC system has several types of licenses that differ in the degree of openness:
The most permissive option is CC0, which removes almost all copyright restrictions. Licenses with the NC (Non-Commercial) notation are not suitable for commercial projects, company websites, paid online courses, etc.
Even if a photo is distributed under a free license, it doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want with it. Typical restrictions on photo stocks:
Additional requirements can be found in the Terms of Service on each individual photo stock. Therefore, always read the license description and content usage rules carefully to avoid problems.
What happens if you ignore the terms of the license and use the photos to your heart's content? Here are just a few of the unpleasant consequences that may await you:
In general, the game is not worth the candle. It's easier to choose legal and licensed content from the start than to deal with claims and spend resources on litigation.
Understanding the nuances of licensing is the first step to using free photo stocks effectively. Next, let's take a look at specific sites and their capabilities for finding quality images.
Here is a selection of reliable and time-tested free photo stocks. All these services offer high-quality photos, illustrations and videos that can be legally used for personal and commercial purposes.
Unsplash is one of the most famous free photo banks in the world. Founded in 2013 as a hobby project, today it has more than 2 million high-resolution photos from 200,000 photographers from around the world.
Key advantages of Unsplash:
The only disadvantage of Unsplash is the enormous popularity of photos from the site. Some shots with a white mug on a wooden table or a girl looking at the mountains are already boring and look clichéd.
Pexels is a fast-growing photo stock with over 1 million free photos and videos. The service is famous for its aesthetic vertical photos and atmospheric videos, which are ideal for creating Instagram stories or website backgrounds.
Pexels highlights:
Content on Pexels is distributed under the CC0 license, which means it can be freely used even for commercial purposes without attribution.
Pixabay is another giant among free photo stocks with an audience of over 20 million users per month. Here you'll find a huge collection of 1.8 million images, videos, vector graphics, and illustrations to suit every taste.
Why Pixabay is interesting:
Most content on Pixabay is licensed under the CC0 license, but some images may require attribution - read the description carefully.
Reshot is a relatively new, but rapidly gaining popularity, photo stock founded in 2019. Its main feature is unique lifestyle photos and "real" portraits of people that don't look like banal stock photos.
What is the value of Reshot:
Reshot authors choose which license to publish their photos under. Most of the works are available under a free license, but sometimes you need to specify the author's name. Read the description below the photo carefully before downloading.
Stocksnap.io is a high-quality photo stock with an intuitive interface and a well-structured image library. It's not as high-profile as the previous services in the selection, but it's definitely worth a look.
Highlights of Stocksnap.io:
In general, Stocksnap.io can be characterized as a small but very well-thought-out stock photo marketplace that prioritizes quality over quantity.
In addition to these giants, we recommend paying attention to niche stocks that specialize in a particular topic:
These services will come in handy if you're looking for content in a specific style and don't want to spend time filtering through large libraries of universal stock photos.
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Despite the diversity of photobanks, they have a lot in common in terms of functionality and organization of content management. Let's take a look at common tools and features that will help you find the images you need faster.
Almost all modern photostocks offer advanced search settings that save time and allow you to find the most relevant images:
Some services also allow you to search for photos by mood (calm, dynamic, happy), location, and even the equipment they were taken with. Make the most of these filters to quickly narrow down your search results.
If you regularly look for content on similar topics, pay attention to ready-made collections on photostocks. These are collections of images united by a common concept, style, or story, compiled by editors or users themselves.
Popular examples of collections:
By subscribing to an interesting collection, you can quickly receive notifications about new photos from your favorite authors or topics that interest you.
As we've already found out, many free licenses require you to specify the name of the author of the used image. The problem is that some stock images don't display this information very obviously, and you have to look for it.
Usually, you can find information about the author under the image or on its detailed view page. There is also often a ready-made line for the attribution. Here are typical examples of such captions:
Don't be lazy and copy this line immediately when downloading a photo, especially if you plan to use it more than once. This will minimize the risk of violating the license and make your life easier in the long run.
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Now that we've figured out the basics of how photo stocks work, let's talk about how to optimize the image search process. After all, it often happens that you seem to have entered the right keywords, but the desired result has not appeared. Or you find a beautiful photo, but its format/resolution doesn't fit the needs of the project.
To avoid such situations, here are some life hacks for working with photo stocks.
The first and most important thing is to learn how to formulate your search queries correctly. Make a list of keywords that describe what you want to find as accurately as possible. For example, if you need a photo of a person working on a laptop, the query might look like this:
man working on laptop
It's helpful to think of synonyms and related phrases that may appear in the descriptions of the images you want:
person using computerfreelancer at workremote workhome officeAlso use related terms that may be present in the photo (desk, coffee, typing, concentration). By creating such an expanded list of keywords, you will be able to find relevant images faster.
The more specific you are in describing the desired result, the higher the chance of finding a suitable photo the first time. General and vague wording such as "beautiful girl" or "happy family" will yield thousands of generic stock photos. But a detailed query like "girl with freckles and red hair smiling in the park" will help you get more accurate results.
Here are a few examples of how you can refine your search phrases on photo stocks:
healthy food -> vegan buddha bowl with quinoa and avocadostreet -> times square yellow taxi at nightstressed employee -> frustrated man holding his head in his hands in the officeThis approach is especially useful if you are looking for a photo to match a specific headline, quote, or mood of a story.
Even if your project is in Ukrainian or Russian, it's better to write your search queries on photo stocks in English. Most authors are native English speakers, so they add descriptions and keywords to their work in this language.
By entering your query in English, you'll get a lot more high-quality and diverse results. And you can always localize your search by using additional keywords (ukrainian/russian girl, kyiv/lviv street, etc.).
Don't limit your search to text-based keyword searches. Actively use the filters and criteria available on a particular photo stock:
So, if you need a photo of a sunset for a presentation cover, the ideal search formula would look something like this:
sunset + horizontal orientation + orange color + high resolution
If you've tried all of the above tips, but still haven't found the perfect shot, try looking for photos that are not quite on topic, but that convey the right mood or concept. For example, to illustrate a post about a vacation, you don't have to use banal photos of a beach and sun loungers. You can find more creative and abstract images, such as smiling people, a cocktail, a passport with tickets, sand and seashells, etc.
Also, don't be afraid to combine photos from different sources, crop/edit them, add text and graphics. Experiment and try different approaches until you get the desired result.
Despite all the advantages, free photo stocks have their drawbacks. It's not always possible to find images that are unique and suitable for the task. Some popular photos can be found on every other website and social media. And if you need more specific content (for example, photos of your city), the chances of finding it in stocks are even lower.
Luckily, today marketers, designers, and content makers have several alternatives to traditional photo banks. Let's take a look at the main ones.
The most obvious, but not the easiest option is to take photos and videos yourself. This can be either amateur shooting with a smartphone or production with the involvement of professional photographers/videographers.
Advantages of your own content:
The downside is the need to invest time and resources in content production. You will need at least a good smartphone/camera, a tripod, light, and basic shooting/processing skills. Otherwise, you'll have to budget for freelancers or a production studio.
UGC (User Generated Content) is photos, videos, reviews, and other content created by your product users or customers themselves. Essentially, it's a free source of unique content that also helps build trust and brand loyalty.
Examples of how to use UGC:
To motivate people to create content, organize contests and prize drawings for the best photos with your product. Or just sincerely ask people to share their impressions and tag you. The main thing is to specify the possibility of using UGC for marketing purposes in the rules in advance.
In recent years, neural networks capable of generating realistic images based on text queries have been rapidly developing. The most famous of them are DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. With their help, you can create a wide variety of graphics - from abstract illustrations to portraits and landscapes.
Advantages of neural networks:
Disadvantages: unpredictable results (especially for faces and texts), the need to spend time mastering the tool and selecting the right queries. Photo generation by a neural network will not completely replace the use of classic photo stocks, but it can be a great addition to them.
If you don't have the time or desire to create your own content, search for UGC, or understand neural networks, there is another option. Order the necessary photos/videos from freelancers on special exchanges or marketplaces.
These can be:
Here you can find people with a portfolio and filming experience who are ready to implement your project. The advantage of this approach is that you get content that is fully customized to your needs. The disadvantages are the high cost (especially compared to free photo stocks) and the need to spend time setting up a task, choosing a contractor, and monitoring the work.
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In addition to classic photos, modern stock sites offer many other types of visual content. Let's take a look at the most popular ones and situations when they can be useful.
Vector images, unlike raster photos, can be scaled infinitely without losing quality. They are indispensable for creating logos, icons, infographics, and other graphic elements that need to look good on different media.
Many photostocks (Freepik, Pixabay, etc.) have large collections of vector illustrations on various topics - from nature and animals to business and technology. These are ready-made AI/EPS/SVG files that can be downloaded and edited in vector editors such as Adobe Illustrator or free Inkscape.
Vector-based solutions are useful for:
In addition to static images, many photo stocks also contain collections of video clips and animated graphics. These can be either real footage of nature, cities, people, or abstract animated backgrounds, transitions, or text effects.
Such videos usually have a short duration (10-30 seconds) and are downloaded in high resolution in popular MOV, MP4, and AVI formats. They can be used as standalone content or combined with each other in video editors.
Stock videos will be useful for:
Some photo banks like Pixabay offer not only visual but also audio content. You can find short musical compositions and sound effects for every taste - from relaxing lounge to dramatic soundtracks and nature noises.
As in the case of photos, audio files on stocks are distributed under free licenses and can be used for non-commercial and commercial purposes. The main thing is to carefully read the description of each track and follow the author's requirements.
Stock music can be used for the following purposes:
With the development of 3D graphics technologies, photo stocks specializing in 3D models and textures are gaining popularity. Here, designers and developers can find ready-made objects for their projects - from simple furniture and interior items to detailed characters and entire scenes.
3D assemblies are usually downloaded in the universal formats OBJ, FBX, BLEND, which are supported by most 3D editors. You can import them into your scenes, combine them with each other, modify them, and texture them as you see fit.
Stock 3D models will come in handy if you're in the business of design:
Another popular type of content on photostocks is all kinds of templates and mockups to demonstrate a design. These are ready-made PSD files that can be edited in Photoshop by substituting your own images and texts.
Typical examples of templates found in stocks:
Such templates save a lot of time when creating your own design layouts and presentation materials. They can help you quickly prepare professional-looking content without any special skills in design and layout.
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