Where to find Fabulous Free Images for your Blog

So much of the web is about images. Bloggers need great (and preferably free) images to make their content stand out.

Finding free images that you can legally use on your website or blog has become much easier than it used to be. The purpose of this post is to direct you toward FREE images to help you in your blogging efforts. We’ve added some comments about the pros and cons of each site.

Regardless of the site that you choose to use for accessing free images, make sure that you read the terms of service so that you can respect the work of other creatives.

FREE image resources for bloggers

1. Canva

canva.com: We are big fans of Canva! Canva is a free online image design tool. Use Canva to easily create beautiful images for your site and your social media channels. Free and paid images are available inside of the Canva dashboard. You can also upload your own images to the Canva.

2. Pixabay

pixabay.com: From the website “On Pixabay you may find and share images free of copyrights. All pictures are published under Creative Commons Public Domain deed CC0.

You can copy, modify, distribute and use the images, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission and without paying attribution. However, depicted content may still be protected by trademarks, publicity or privacy rights.”

We use Pixabay a lot.

3. Pexels

pexels.com: Free high-quality photos you can use everywhere. “All photos on Pexels are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the photos. The pictures are free for personal and even for commercial use. All without asking for permission or setting a link to the source. So that attribution is not required. All in all the photos are completely free to be used for any legal purpose.”

4. Unsplash

unsplash.com: All photos are licensed under a Creative Commons Zero license. This means that you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash.

5. PicJumbo

picjumbo.com: Created by Viktor Hanacek Picjumbo is a great source to find beautiful images.  New photos are uploaded daily. Photos are free for commercial and personal use.

Picjumbo has search boxes that are actually sponsored links to other paid photo collections. We understand that revenue from ads helps keep the images free but these ad search boxes can be confusing for users. If you use a browser adblocker extension, these will be blocked on Picjumbo.

6. Gratisography

gratisography.com: Photographer Ryan McGuire provides this collection of high-resolution pictures for free. You can use them on your personal or commercial project free of copyright restrictions.

7. Morguefile

morguefile.com: Founded in 1996 by college student Michael Connors.

Photographers contribute images to Morguefile for visitors to use in their creative projects. Yes, they’re all completely free. The website does ask that you credit the photographer when possible.

8. The Open Photo Project

openphoto.net: The Open Photo Project is a photo-sharing platform created in 1998 by Michael Jastremski. Contributors have offered their images free of charge under terms of Creative Commons licensing.

9. Unprofound

unprofound.com: This site was founded in 2001 by Jim who was having trouble finding good quality public domain images. He has contributed much of the portfolio here. According to the website “The Unprofound Collection is for anyone to use in just about any way. You may not redistribute these photos to any other websites or offline buyers.”

10. I’d Pin That!

idpinthat.com:  Created to help bloggers and non-designers create high quality images like those often seen on Pinterest. I’d Pin That is more than just a source for free images — it is an image editor! Use the tools provided here to add your own text and edit the images right on the site.

The images on I’d Pin That are provided by Pixabay and Flickr. These images are Public Domain and free of any copyright. They can be edited, distributed and otherwise used as you see fit without the need for attribution.

Do you have another favourite free image site that you use? Add to the conversation!