Free image sites

This post is a review of several free image sites.

Image credit: Ryan MacGuire | Edited with Canva

Last week I reviewed government image sites. If you are looking for high quality images - especially of military action and space - these sites are fantastic.

Several websites exist which provide stock photos at no cost, and there are no royalties required either.

Morguefile.com

From the Morguefile website:

Morguefile is a free photo archive “for creatives, by creatives.” Founded by Michael Connors in the early Internet days of 1996, the site was created to serve as a free image exchange for creative professionals and teachers to use in their work. This same mission remains true today: we are a community-based free photo site, and all photos found in the Morguefile archive are free for you to download and re-use in your work, be it commercial or not. The photos have been contributed by a wide range of creatives from around the world, ranging from amateur photo hobbyists to professionals.

Without having to create an account you can search and download images and sign-up to receive a zip file of images regularly. The July image pack contained 30 images in various categories including nature, landscapes, people, food, animals, etc. Creating an account permits you to upload photos and save favorites.

Image credit: quicksandala

Wikimedia Commons

From the website:

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here. The repository is created and maintained not by paid archivists, but by volunteers. 

At the time of this writing, Wikimedia Commons holds over 32 million image, sound, and video files.

The fastest way to locate an image is using search. You can also choose from one of the highlighted sets of images (featured images, quality images, valued images) and use the content selector, which starts with nature, society, culture, science, and engineering.

Image credit: Kim Boek from Seoul, South Korea

PicJumbo

PicJumbo bills itself as a site with "free stock photos." While this is true, PicJumbo really wants you to become a premium member which costs $10 (blogger), $19 (designer), or $39 (agency) per month.  You will find a large variety of quality images using search and browsing through categories.

You can also receive free images via e-mail.

Image credit: Viktor Hanacek

Gratisography

From the website:

Free high-resolution pictures you can use on your personal and commercial projects. Click on an image to download the high-resolution version. New awesome pictures added weekly! All pictures were photographed by Ryan McGuire and free of copyright restrictions.

This website has some excellent quality images, but with definite edge, alternative views, and interesting creativity. However, sometimes that's exactly what you need.

 What images sites do you use?