Where do graphic designers get their images?

Download scroll-stopping images of the highest quality to make professional designs. If you have the time to download and tag all of them every day, you could build quite a library of photos. You won’t find isolated shots, and photos are frequently just a tiny bit lower quality than you’d pay for. Openphoto.net has been collecting free photos since 1998, with contributors from all over the world. Many people use it is a photoblog site, so you might find many Flickr-style personal shots.

Adobe Stock is our top choice for designers thanks to excellent Creative Cloud integration and a large collection of stock images. As a budget pick, you should consider the very affordable Envato Elements. Read on for the rest of our tested picks to find the best stock photo site for designers based on your needs. Photos serve a variety of niches including marketing and social media, digital ads, broadcasting and streaming, editorial content, and so much more. While we always pick stock photo sites based on the same 5 crucial metrics, we adjust weights according to the category. We also granted extra points for various plugins, add-ons, and tools that make your life as a designer easier.

Are these photos free for commercial use?

In conclusion, for designers, developers, and video creators who require a multitude of assets on a budget, Envato Elements is an ideal choice. The unlimited plan offers significant savings compared to pay-per-download options. For those needing more flexibility and broader rights, traditional stock sites might be a better fit. However, for overall value, Envato Elements proves to be an impressive contender.

If it seems too good to be true, you may end up paying a higher price later. While it’s relatively new, Picjumbo is growing in popularity, with millions of downloads and counting. It also has a premium service that offers thousands of exclusive photos. To top it off, the site’s sizable database of photos best stock photography for designers is curated by a team of professionals to ensure quality and originality. The biggest advantage of choosing a premium stock photo site is the guarantee of working with a unique visual resource. In fact, we’d highly encourage it, as many of our collections were
created with entrepreneurs in mind.

Can you use stock images in a portfolio?

Head over to Startup Stock Photos — another niche stock site, where you’ll find thousands of high-quality images of office environments and startup boardrooms. It offers over a million professional photos, graphics, templates, mockups, and other design and illustration resources. Pexels is particularly popular for bloggers, marketers, content creators, and anyone looking for some great wallpapers. As another photo-centric site, it regularly promotes interviews with photographers and offers photo challenges with prizes. Another popular option is free image websites like Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay, where you can find images that are free for commercial use under Creative Commons licenses. However, as these are open to anyone, the images may not be as unique as those from paid platforms.

• Regarded as one of the best among stock photo sites, it boasts quick responses via live chat and email responses within one to three business days.
• However, it’s important to understand how to use these images properly so you don’t end up with a copyright infringement problem down the road.
• When considering team pricing, though, Envato fares better against its competitors, with costs decreasing as you add more team members.
• Download scroll-stopping images of the highest quality to make professional designs.
• Founded in 2011, the platform offers a wealth of media from public archives, some of it more than a century old.

Plus, get a breakdown of the licensing options for each platform, so you know which photos you can use worry-free. Graphic designers create visual content, which includes strategic use of colors, font, composition, and shapes to create beautiful graphics. An integral part of design is high-quality images—that is non-negotiable. And the cheapest and most convenient way for designers to get images is through stock photo agencies like Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, and Canva. Graphic designers source their images from a variety of locations, each offering unique options to enhance their designs.

What is the best stock image site for designers?

Rawpixel searches for original digital collections all over the world to fuel its free collection, and the results are bursting with creativity and authenticity. It’s one site that’s worth checking if you’re looking for something original to kick off a new design project. There are also over 200,000 royalty-free illustrations for designers and illustrators to use freely, too. Most recently, Pixabay moved into the sound space and now offers hundreds of free sound effects and music.

These platforms provide millions of high-quality images, vectors, and illustrations that can be used in designs. By purchasing licenses for these images, designers ensure they are using them legally and ethically, adhering to the terms set by the image’s creator or rights holder. Whether you’re working for a client or yourself, you shouldn’t skimp on photographs and other visual elements. Some of the best stock photo sites for designers can provide you with high-quality images at a reasonable price. Hiring a photographer might yield a better, bespoke image, but they are expensive and take long compared to stock images.

Top 22 Unique Stock Photo Websites for Creators (Free & Paid)

Feel free to add your logo or brand to our images to make them your own. Free stock photos are great resources for designers because they are easy to find and can save you money. However, it’s important to understand how to use these images properly so you don’t end up with a copyright infringement problem down the road. The best way to avoid problems is to buy a license, like a royalty-free license. A reasonable sized collection of quite good photos is available at Stockvault.

Envato Elements emerges as the most economical subscription service for royalty-free stock photos, with prices starting as low as $16.50 a month or $11.50 for students. This minimal monthly charge unlocks unlimited access to over 13 million assets available on the platform. At the time of writing, they have just under 7 million images, and just under 80,000 contributing photographers. In order to stand out among the huge crowd, Dreamstime photographers often put their photos in the free section of the site. Founded by creative photographer Ryan McGuire, the site offers thousands of unique photos, many of them produced by the founder himself. It also offers vector graphics in EPS format, so it’s worth a look for designers, too.

Best Free Stock Photo Websites

Search is extremely simple (keyword only), but you do have the option to browse categories to find images (which is probably the easiest way). It’s called “morguefile” in reference to the term used for a place to keep postproduction creative materials. The photos are mostly great quality, and you can filter your results by several characteristics, which is handy. Keyword tagging is relatively basic, with between five and fifteen tags per photo, so use a few terms to search. But choosing the wrong ones can get you or your business into trouble, so it’s worth a quick look at the different licenses and what they mean. If you stumble upon a rare image that’s too small or overprocessed, Vintage Stock Photos can help you re-scan and remaster it.

Another popular site for creators looking for high-quality photos and stock videos is Pixabay. Pixabay has over 2.6 million high-quality images and videos free for personal and commercial purposes. The site is easy to use and has quality filters to help you find what you’re looking for.

If you’re unsure, the 7-day free trial lets you take 10 royalty-free images for a spin. But it’s crucial to remember that most services providing unlimited stock media asset downloads necessitate multiple licenses for varied uses of the same asset. Thus, once your subscription ends, you can’t use a previously downloaded asset for new projects, though its use in existing projects can continue. Another restriction is the prohibition of using assets for merchandise, despite other commercial uses being allowed. Our review and assessment of Envato Elements highlighted its exceptional value to creatives mindful of their expenses.