With millions of hand-selected, high-quality photos, vectors, videos, and illustrations, it’s easy to understand why. Graphic designers source their images from a variety of locations, each offering unique options to enhance their designs. If you’re curious about where graphic designers find their visual elements, then you’re in for an enlightening journey.

But I discourage you to cheat with stock images in your portfolios, since the portfolio represents your skills, and many employers and universities take it seriously. Expect a 16% cut on yearly subscriptions compared to monthly plans, up to 78.6% stock images for designers discount on bulk purchases, and even a 33% markdown on bulk purchases of Extended licenses for videos. With a collection of over 255 million images, Depositphotos carves out a niche for itself in the stock image world, particularly for bloggers.

Make estimating web design costs easy

Instead, you’ll find interesting photos that stand out from those at other sites. For example, they offer a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to find Unsplash photos directly from the WordPress dashboard. Unlike many of the other sites on this list, Unsplash focuses exclusively on photos (at least, for now). That means you won’t find videos, vectors, or any other type of resource. When you’re browsing or searching at Vecteezy, there are several helpful filters you can use to quickly narrow your search and find exactly what you’re looking for.

This applies to all major stock image sites, including Shutterstock and Adobe Stock. 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.

Pexels

Another benefit of using the freebies from Adobe Stock is that all of these resources have passed Adobe’s review for quality of potential legal issues. All of the ideas revolve around e-commerce and selling online, which makes sense since it’s owned by Shopify. The Public Domain Review is also an online magazine, with essays and other collections. Highly regarded by specialized critics, the site attracts droves of researchers, writers, scholars, and art history lovers. Vintage Stock Photos is a wonderful photo resource for creators with a soft spot for nostalgia. You can find thousands of photos, most of which are somewhere between 40 and 80 years old, in remastered JPEG format.

• Probably the largest collection of free images in one place but beware, some search results may not be Creative Commons so do your homework before using a photo.
• StockSnap adds hundreds of images on a daily basis and all photos are released under creative commons public domain – no attribution required.
• The site was founded in 2011 by Ryan McGuire, and most of the photos on the site were taken by Ryan.
• Despite having chat and email support options, live chat representatives frequently struggle with resolving issues and often pass on inquiries to other team members.

Unsplash offers a large collection of free high-resolution photos and has become one of the best sources for stock images. The Unsplash team combs through new submissions and features the very best photos on their homepage. 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. Get a list of the best stock photo websites for designers and creatives.

Rawpixel Public Domain

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. You’re allowed to modify all royalty-free stock photos from any site, except those marked with “Editorial use only” or if their license specifies otherwise.

You may be able to search all the different sites here, but you still have to sign up for accounts on the site that hosts the image. 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. Vecteezy is one of the most popular platforms for designers, marketers, and freelancers, but even major brands are known to use it on occasion.

Best stock photo sites for designers

They use vector graphics because it allows you to scale your work without losing quality. Vector graphics can be scaled infinitely without loss of quality, while raster graphics cannot. Vecteezy requires attribution but includes signed model and property releases for every free photo. Although that’s a slight inconvenience, it does allow for your download history to be tracked.

In addition to its free database, the site also offers a paid service for exclusive images. Founded in 2011, the platform offers a wealth of media from public archives, some of it more than a century old. If you stumble upon a rare image that’s too small or overprocessed, Vintage Stock Photos can help you re-scan and remaster it. 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. Our library is updated on a daily basis so you can find the newest and trendiest photos and designs.

With thousands of visitors coming to the site, Unsplash began adding many more photos. They also opened up submissions so other photographers could upload their own free stock photos. DeviantART is a popular website for digital and traditional media artists to showcase their work. Use the Advanced Search and check the ‘Creative Commons licensed’ box to find pictures that can be used in your web design and development. The site has excellent tagging so it’s quite easy to find images under the subject that you’re interested.

There are very few sites that offer a higher quantity of free resources than Pixabay, but Pixabay lags behind in terms of quality. You’ll certainly find some outstanding photos and other resources at Pixabay, but there are also some lower-quality resources that you’ll need to sort through. Currently, Canva does not offer videos, vectors, or other types of creative content, aside from the templates that use Canva’s design software. For those who use Canva’s design software, the photos are very easy and convenient to use and add to your designs. Currently, Burst offers only photos, which means you won’t find videos, vectors, or other resources here.

With a vast library of creative assets and one of the most competitive pricing structures in the industry, not to mention a free trial, Envato Elements provides an unmatched resource pool. Adobe Stock sits at the top of our ranking for stock image free trials. With the 30-day free trial of any lower-tier subscriptions, you can access 10 to 40 royalty-free downloads at no cost. This free trial pairs perfectly with other Adobe product trials, such as Photoshop.