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.
Wikimedia Commons is a “media file repository” of public domain and freely-licensed educational media content, including images, sounds and video clips. Launched on 7 September 2004 by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Commons uses the “wiki-technology” that is the same technology used in Wikipedia. Wikmedia Commons also aggregates files from other projects, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikispecies, Wikisource, and Wikinews. As of October 2015, there are more than 28.7 million files in more than 120,000 collections. Users can conduct a keyword search or browse the content by topic, type, author, location, license and source.
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.
Photogen provides free high-resolution photographs for download and reuse. Users can search by keywords or browse by 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.
Developed and designed by food photographer, Jakub Kapusnak, FoodieFeed is “a resource of free high resolution food pictures available to download and use on your website, blog, in your presentation, your website template, WP demo, in design project for your client or just anywhere else”. Users can search by keywords or browse by different categories.
Raumrot.com presents “free, handpicked stockphotos” for commercial and personal uses. As of July 2015, there are 681 of such images. Users can browse by categories or by special image sets.
Developed by Italian photographer and graphic designer, Daniel Nanescu, Split Shire provides copyright-free photographs for designers, bloggers, social marketeers and commercial companies. Users can search or browse images by categories.
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.
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.
