Tookapic was launched as a platform to help users to “develop a habit of daily photo taking in a fun and addictive way”. The habit is gamified where users will be awarded with points and badges. Users are also able to share their images for reuse. The stock photos section of the website presents the pictures shared by the community. As of November 2015, there are more than 14,000 stock photos uploaded with 66% free for download. Users can search or browse by different categories.
DesignerPics.com is developed by Jeshu John, a web designer and developer based in Kochi, Southern India. Users can search by keywords or browse by categories.
Picjumbo is developed by photographer, Viktor Hanacek. Users can search by keywords or browse by different categories.
Pixabay is a photo community that provides images on public domain. The site contains curated images contributed by photographers around the world. As of September 2015, there are more than 470,000 photographs, vectors and illustrations. Users can search by keywords or browse by various categories.
Lock & Stock Photos provides photographs taken by social media marketeer, AJ Montpetit.
Founded by a startup based in Switzerland, PLiXS is a database of free high resolution images. As of August 2015, there are close to 3,400 images, contributed by photographers around the world. Users can search or filter their search by photo filters and categories.
Since 2013, British Library released more than 1 million images to Flickr Commons. The images were obtained from the Library’s digitised collection of 65,000 books of the 17th, 18th and 19th century. The release of these images indicates the Library’s desire “to improve knowledge of and about them, to enable novel and unexpected ways of using them, and to begin working with researchers to explore and interpret large scale digital collections”. The images are arranged by different themes, such as book covers, illustrated letters, maps, flora and children book illustrations.
ISO Republic provides exclusive stock images for creatives. It is founded in 2014 by English photographer and designer, Tom Eversley. The mission is to “provide high-quality images to be used by designers, developers, bloggers, marketers and social media teams”.
Epicantus provides images that are captured by visual and UX designer, Daria Nepriakhina and other photographers.
Developed by German web developers, Pexels provided handpicked stock photos from free image sources, such as Unsplash and Gratisography. To date, there are over 3,000 images that are on Creative Commons zero (CC0) license. Users can search or browse the images.
StockSnap contains curated images by Marc Chouinard and Christopher Gimmer. The images are from around the web and photographers from their network. Users can search or browse by date, trending, number of views, number of downloads and number of favourites.
Provided by web design agency, IM Creator Ltd., IM Free Collections is “a curated collection of free web design resources”. The images are from various image sources that provided these images on Creative Commons licenses. Users can search or browse by various categories.
VADS is an “online resource for visual arts”. Over 12 years, VADS built a portfolio of visual art collections, which comprise of “over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK”. These collections were contributed by various institutions in the UK. Through the site, users can search or browse by collections and themes. VADS also provides a series of resources that were built around the image collections by “specialist authors and lecturers”.
The NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 800,000 images digitized from the library’s collections, which spans across different mediums, subjects and time periods. The collections include illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs. The collections can also be browse through different categories – Arts & Literature, Cities & Buildings, Culture & Society, History & Geography, Industry & Technology, Nature & Science, and Printing & Graphics.
The National Geographic Society is one of the largest scientific institutions in the world, focusing on geography, archaeology, natural science, conversation and the study of world culture and history. They offer stunning photographs, which can be a good source of images in these areas for educational and personal purposes.
Compiled by Swiss UI designer, Vilem Ries, Albumarium offers high-resolution photographs, organised in different albums. Photographs on this site are contributed by users on Creative Common licenses.
Developed by Michael Connors in 1996, MorgueFile is an online community for photographers and remains as a popular image source for creatives. It is currently managed together by Michael and his brother, Kevin Connors, and Johannes Seemann. This platform contains photographs “freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site“.
Getty Images is one of the world’s leading suppliers for stock images. Through their embed tool, users can drop an image into their blog, website or social media feed without worrying about copyright restrictions. The tool will generate a code that will automatically include the necessary attribution and link back to the licensing page.
Unsplash is a collection of high-resolution stock images by Canada-based design agency, Crew. 10 new photographs are uploaded every 10 days.
