Superfamous Images
The images on this site are contributed by Superfamous Studio, a design agency led by Dutch designer Folkert Gorter.
StockSnap.io
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.
Public Domain Review Collections
Developed by The Open Knowledge Foundation, The Public Domain Review is “an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to promoting and celebrating the public domain in all its richness and variety”, as according to the website. Images in their collections are derived from a wide range of online archives, that are on public domain. The images are arranged by topics, where users can search or browse by time, style, genre, type, content and rights.
IM Free Collections
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.
Life of Pix
Life of Pix offers high-resolution photographs with no copyright restrictions. The photographs were contributed by Montreal-based Leeroy Advertising Agency and its network of photographers. To date, the site contains close to 600 images. Life of Pix also has a sister site, Life of Vids, that provides access to public domain videos.
Biodiversity Heritage Library Flickr
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is “a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global ‘biodiversity commons'”. Started in 2011, the staff of BHL began to upload illustrations from books in their collections. These illustrations were created over the past 500 years. To date, more than 98,000 of natural history and botanical illustrations have been uploaded to their Flickr account.
Folger Digital Image Collection
This database offers access to high resolution images from the Folger Shakespeare Library, including books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, and art. It is a good resource to explore more about the culture, people, art, costumes and fashion design during (or under the influence) of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). To date, the database contains more than 90,000 images. Users can show multiple images side-by-side, zoom in and out, view cataloging information when available, export thumbnails in various sizes, and construct persistent URLs linking back to items or searches.
Gratisography
Gratisography contains high-resolution pictures that were photographed by Ryan McGuire of Bells Design. New pictures are added on a weekly basis.
Open F|S (Freer|Sackler)
The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art. Together, both galleries holds “some of the most important holdings of Asian art in the world”, with Asian-inspired American art and contemporary art in Asia. More than 40,000 objects are available online. Users can search or browse by object type, topic, name, place and date.
Viintage Graphics
Viintage Graphics is a “public domain image repository” that focuses on the term “vintage”. Through their website, users can browse the images by collections.
David Rumsey Map Collection
Started more than 30 years ago by Cartography Associates, the David Rumsey Map Collection “focuses on rare 16th through 20th century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania”. The collection includes “atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children’s, and manuscript maps”. Their digital collection contains more than 61,000 images, where users can search or browse by types, locations and periods. The website also provides many ways to view the map collections, such as Luna Browser, Georeferencer, Google Earth, etc. Learn more about the evolution of the physical collection into the online collection here.
Pattern Library
The Pattern Library is an ongoing project that compiles patterns by designers. The site is developed by Tim Holman and Claudio Guglieri.
Subtle Patterns
Created and curated by Atle Mo, Subtle Patterns is a free resource for textured patterns. Users can also purchase their plugin to use their resource directly from Adobe Photoshop.
Museu d’Art de Catalunya Collection
The Museu d’Art de Catalunya, or MNAC in short, is a national museum located in Barcelona, Spain. The museum is known for its outstanding collections of Romanesque mural paintings and Catalan Modernism. Their digital collection contains more than 8,500 images of artworks from their collections. Users can browse the collections, search and narrow the results by classification, themes and period.
LACMA Collections
LACMA houses more than 120,000 objects across different media, region and periods such as Greek, Roman and Etruscan art, Asian art, American and Latin American art, decorative arts and design, photography, and modern and contemporary art. The digital collections provide access to more than 53,000 images of artworks with more than 20,000 that LACMA believes to be in the public domain. Users can search and filter the results by artist, classification, curatorial area, periods and location.
Wellcome Images
Wellcome Images is one of the visual collections of the Wellcome Library. It contains themes ranging “from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and science”. To date, there are close to 130,000 images across different themes.
Noun Project
Launched in 2010, The Noun Project is an online catalog of downloadable icons and symbols submitted by designers around the world. Users may search for png or editable svg files of the icons.
NASA Image Galleries
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA in short, is an American agency that pioneers in aeronautics research, space explorations and operations, space technology and science. Their image galleries provide access to non-copyrighted up-to-date images and other multimedia files that were captured from their operations, missions and research.
Albumarium
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.
MorgueFile
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“.