DazzlinDonna » Favorite 10 Free Stock Photo Download Sites

Favorite 10 Free Stock Photo Download Sites

Need a free stock photo? Free … meaning you don’t have to pay anyone cold, hard cash for its use? Look no further. I’ve compiled my top 10 list of favorite stock photo sites that don’t cost you anything. Make sure you read any terms of usage, however, as you may need to attribute its source via a link or mention.

If you need to return, bookmark this page at del.icio.us for quick reference.

Yotophoto - This is the first place I usually turn to because Yotophoto is the ultimate search engine for finding free use photos across the entire web. It searches some sites that I don’t include in this list, simply because you’ll find them via Yotophoto.

UPDATE: Everyone thought I was crazy for not including Stock Xchng and Morgue Files because I find them via Yotophoto, but who am I to question the masses, so those are now linked here as well.
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Image*After - Has a nice collection of photos and textures, with good search functionality.
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Photogen - Nice collection of good quality photos.
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Free Digital Photos - Good quality photos for free, although their best quality pics come with a charge.
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NOAA Photo Library - This is just one example of the many photos you can use for free from the US Government sites. You’ll find more listed at the directory at the bottom of this list. This batch contains some amazing oceanic and atmospheric photos.
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BurningWell - Not the prettiest site in the bunch, but so what? It’s got what you need - free use photos.
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Backgrounds Archive - Pretty photos. Big photos. Pretty and big photos. What more can I say?
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PD Photo - Lots of travel and country-specific photos, along with some more general categories too.
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Public Domain Photos - Claims to be the largest collection of public domain photos. It also has clip art.
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WP Clipart - Speaking of clip art this site has lots of clip art to choose from, with some photos as well.
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Uncle Sam’s Photos - As promised up above, this is a nice directory listing more of the U.S. Government’s repositories of free to use photos.
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If you can’t find the image you need from one of the above places, it just might not exist! Good luck, and happy photo hunting!

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Posted on July 18th, 2007 by DazzlinDonna
Filed under: Nice Photos

63 Responses to “Favorite 10 Free Stock Photo Download Sites”

Michael VanDeMar, on July 18th, 2007 at 10:34 pm Said:

Very nice! Thanks for sharing these.
logu, on July 19th, 2007 at 2:58 am Said:

see also http://www.sxc.hu/
Duncan, on July 19th, 2007 at 3:11 am Said:

I’m surprised you havn’t got http://www.sxc.hu/ on your list. Its the biggest free stock photo website on the internet.
Kenneth Jones, on July 19th, 2007 at 4:39 am Said:

stock.xchng is really good to…

http://www.sxc.hu/
MrSteel, on July 19th, 2007 at 4:46 am Said:

sxc.hu is best for me
Fe. Køs, on July 19th, 2007 at 4:55 am Said:

Cool websites!

I found what I looking for!

Thanks a lot!
DazzlinDonna, on July 19th, 2007 at 6:25 am Said:

You are all very right about sxc, but that’s one that Yotophoto covers very well, so I didn’t see the point in listing it. In fact, imo, search is quicker and better via Yotophoto than directly from sxc.
Pedro, on July 19th, 2007 at 2:29 pm Said:

Don’t forget http://www.photocase.com
Patricia - Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker, on July 19th, 2007 at 11:33 pm Said:

Donna, thanks for the photo sources. This is one thing I still need to learn how to do to add to the look of my blog.
Patricia - Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker, on July 19th, 2007 at 11:37 pm Said:

I love your “emerging from the cocoon to break free” and your butterfly is beautiful. When I am finished with my blog, I want a butterfly and an eagle on it. The butterfly for transformation and the eagle for freedom, flying high above the world and being able to see the bigger picture from up high. Great site.
Sugar, on July 20th, 2007 at 1:10 am Said:

I disagree to that bit about sxc.hu.

Yotophoto does not have a way of sorting the images and since most of its images come from flickr, there’s no real way of sorting through the junk there.

Sxc.hu is the best stock site out there, in my humble opinion. Sporting a huge community too, it’s not that difficult to find any picture you want.
moonliter, on July 20th, 2007 at 1:04 pm Said:

The ones I liked at Imageafter looked like they were not free.They said you need to register and then you can have the picture as low as .26. I realize that’s not much but your links said free , so what gives?
DazzlinDonna, on July 20th, 2007 at 1:13 pm Said:

No idea, moonliter. I haven’t experienced that. I just click on the little download photo button above each pic to get ‘em. They’ve all been free, without me ever registering.
Christi, on July 21st, 2007 at 4:37 pm Said:

Great collection of photo sites! I also use http://www.sxc.hu/ for most of my photos, but on my http://www.bloggingmthood.com site I take nearly all of the photos myself. It just depends on what type of pics a person needs, but when I can’t find certain photos, I’ll now check out the ones you mentioned here! Thanks again!
Christian, on July 22nd, 2007 at 4:35 pm Said:

http://commons.wikimedia.org - not stock photos per se, but still. There’s a gazillion images of anything and everything, some even in public domain.
Garcya, on July 23rd, 2007 at 10:57 am Said:

Also a web design blog that offers free vector graphics is http://www.Garcya.us/blog ! Every day are added a set of 3 vector graphics for download. Example here http://garcya.us/blog/free-vector-graphics/ !
Enjoy
LOR3N, on July 23rd, 2007 at 12:15 pm Said:

Great list. I will be sure to check these out. Try everystockphoto.com, too.
www.gelder.tk, on July 24th, 2007 at 10:36 am Said:

great !
I think i can use it for my wbsite.
thnx

http://www.gelder.tk
hoezodekey, on July 29th, 2007 at 5:04 am Said:

its usefull and in a way brillant, I am going to join you in the near future, so
“bonne change: et au revoir
J, on July 30th, 2007 at 2:12 pm Said:

http://www.morguefile.com/
DazzlinDonna, on July 30th, 2007 at 3:17 pm Said:

Again, I agree with morguefile, but it’s also one that YotoPhoto does a good job of pulling from, which is why I didn’t mention it either.
Sachin, on August 2nd, 2007 at 2:56 am Said:

I tried to stumbleupon share this site but it gives page not found error
mehdi, on August 5th, 2007 at 8:24 am Said:

I’m disapointed not to see morguefile.com to be mentioned.
The yotopho engine, helps to find photo that are not always free.
dfrag, on August 6th, 2007 at 4:12 pm Said:

Umm just to let you know, YoToPhoto searches “Flickr” which is by no means a free photo site or a royalty free photo site.
DazzlinDonna, on August 6th, 2007 at 4:19 pm Said:

Yotophoto attempts to only show free photos from Flickr, if my understanding of it is correct, however.
Elwyn Jenkins, on August 6th, 2007 at 8:42 pm Said:

This list actually needs to be downsized to just the five best sites. Some of these are not worth the recommendation. SO recommending the best five would make the usefulness of this list improve.
Stock Photos New Zealand, on August 9th, 2007 at 5:24 pm Said:

We have a number of $1 stock images from in and round New Zealand - you have put together a very good list tho, and that will be a lot of use to people. Well done.
Jen / domestika, on August 13th, 2007 at 1:22 pm Said:

This is a terrific resource, Donna. Thanks so much for sharing - especially Yotophoto (new to me) - a brilliant time-saver!
Justin, on August 31st, 2007 at 8:49 pm Said:

Maybe I did something wrong but sxc.hu took me to a site where I had to purchase credits to download. They didn’t before. Maybe I clicked on the wrong thing..
DazzlinDonna, on August 31st, 2007 at 8:52 pm Said:

My guess, Justin, is you probably clicked on an ad.
Jen / domestika, on September 1st, 2007 at 3:06 am Said:

Or on a photo in the last row, maybe, Jason? The last row of photos on any sxc.hu results page is the ’stockexpert’ photos, which are paid. All the upper rows are the free ones.
Rose, on September 8th, 2007 at 9:39 pm Said:

Thank you for the list. I did a similar list not to long ago. I stumbled this for you.
Stefan Witte - Image*After, on September 13th, 2007 at 1:28 am Said:

to Moonliter:
I think you have mistakenly clicked on one of our advertisers and interpreted their site as ours. Images and textures on Image*After are always totally free and hi-res (1200×1600 minimum).

to DazzlinDonna:
Great article - and thanx for using/mentioning us
photodesign, on September 24th, 2007 at 4:15 pm Said:

You can get thousands of high res photos for free at Freerange Stock - http://www.freerangestock.com, and if you’re a photographer you can participate in Google AdSense revenue sharing.
kennygadams, on December 10th, 2007 at 3:16 pm Said:

Thanks for putting this list together. I found it to be a great resource! Check out http://www.HistoricalStockPhotos.com - They have put together about 75 different galleries that feature only historic pictures. They are all free!
Helen, on December 19th, 2007 at 12:03 pm Said:

I can add to your list of free photo web sites http://freefoto.ca/ - big collection of photos with keywords search functionality.
john, on April 18th, 2008 at 2:04 pm Said:

Hi

This site has thousands of cost free large graphics including photos,illustrations,logos,fractals and textures all for immediate free download.

http://www.freegraphicscentre,com

Absolutelly free link back not required (but would be nice)- don’t have to join unless you want a lightbox (no cost)
Julieanne van Zyl, on April 29th, 2008 at 3:28 pm Said:

Thanks so much Donna, I’m glad your site came up high in the search engines when I was looking for some images. Very useful information here. I’m going to put a link to this site on mine.
JohnK, on May 8th, 2008 at 10:29 am Said:

Hi,

I like http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/ All pictures are public domain, so there is no copyright on them.