Photo by JESHOOTScom via Pixabay
In the past five years, there's been a real boom in websites offering high resolution, print-quality photos that are free for commercial and personal use. Whether you're wanting photos for a professional print design project or even just looking for a beautiful new photo to enlarge for your office wall, check these websites before you shell out the cash for paid photo services.
1. Unsplash
The first place I look if I want non-cheesy, free, high-resolution photos is Unsplash. The images at Unsplash are well curated, and have a young, artsy vibe. They're high enough quality for printing and Unsplash doesn't require that you start an account with them to download images. All images on Unsplash are free for commercial or personal use. Another nice feature of Unsplash is that there's little advertising on the website; the same can't be said for most of the following photo sources. I like Unspalsh so much that I sometimes even contribute my own photos to the pool for others to use.
2. Stocksnap
Stocksnap is another great gallery to search for quality, high-resolution photos at no cost. Similar to Unsplash but a bit less hipster. They offer alle of their images under the same CC0 license that lets you do what you want with their photos, with no attribution required. The quality of the images is sharp and good for print at most sizes. You can read their image licensing details here.
3. Pexels
Still searching for that perfect image? Enter your keyword(s) into Pexels and press enter! Pexels specifies that their images can be used in print marketing material: "Use the photos for flyers, postcards, invitations, magazines, albums, books and more" but be sure to read their licensing write-up here before you hit print!
4. Pixabay
Not to be confused with Pexels (the "p" and the "x" in both names still throws me off), Pixabay advertises that they have over 1.5 million royalty free stock photos and videos. Pixabay requires that you create an account and log in to access the images in higher resolutions, but it's worth it if they have the image you're wanting!
Of course, there are many more such websites, but I hope these four favourites of mine will be useful to you! It's always good to have a few different links go-to free stock photo websites in mind when you need images for a project, because particularly when it comes to free stock images, not every site will have the image you need.
If you can't find the image you're wanting for free, try a cost-effective source of paid images like Shutterstock.
Lastly, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to check and double check the licensing on "free" images before ordering a large print run using those photos. Free print-quality stock images can be a great solution in many situations, but watch for my follow-up post, where I explain why (in my opinion) you should never use a "free" image on your book cover, or front and centre in any other important, widely-distributed print marketing piece.
Wondering about using an image for print, but not sure if the resolution is good enough? Give me a shout through my Contact page and I'll help you figure it out! Or sign up for my Book Done newsletter to get tips and stories to help you get your book project done!