Here are 24 royalty-free image banks that you can use
Image banks are a series of platforms where you will be able to find all kinds of high quality images at your disposal representing different types of everyday situations. These types of photographs are perfect for use in certain content such as articles, publications or advertisements on social networks.
At Arcadina we have compiled a series of professional image banks that you can use to illustrate some of your publications. Some of them require you to register in order to download the images or to purchase a licence for them. It is important that you read their image use policy carefully as each resource is different and has its own conditions.
Discover here the best image banks of the moment by Arcadina.
Contenido
- What do the best image banks on the Internet have in common?
- 24 image banks that will surprise you
- 1# PixaBay (pixabay.com)
- 2# UnSplash (unsplash.com)
- 3# Free for commercial use (freeforcommercialuse.net)
- 4# Morgue File (morguefile.com)
- 5# Free Images (formerly Stock.xchng) (freeimages.com)
- 6# DreamsTime (en.dreamstime.com)
- 7# iStockPhoto (istockphoto.com/en)
- 8# ShutterStock (shutterstock.com)
- 9# Smithsonian (si.edu)
- 10# Pexels (pexels.com)
- 11# Negative Space (negativespace.co)
- 12# Moose (photos.icons8.com)
- 13# PicJumbo (picjumbo.com)
- 14# Flickr (flickr.com)
- 15# IMAGO (imago-images.com)
- 16# LibreShot (libreshot.com)
- 17# Gratisography (gratisography.com)
- 18# PikWizard (pikwizard.com)
- 19# StockSnap.io (stocksnap.io)
- 20# Kaboompics (kaboompics.com)
- 21# Life of Pix (lifeofpix.com)
- 22# FreePik (freepik.es)
- 23# StockVault (stockvault.net)
- 24# New York Public Library (digitalcollections)
- Arcadina’s guide to the best image banks of the moment
- Arcadina goes with you
What do the best image banks on the Internet have in common?
Even if you are a photographer and you find it very easy to create your own content, sometimes you may need to use a much more specific set of photographs to make certain publications on your blog, networks or website and resorting to image banks will save you a lot of management time. These types of platforms allow users to download a series of photographs, illustrations, vectors and even videos for personal and/or commercial use.
Among the image banks you will find some in which the photographs are free to use, these types of platforms are very practical but as you can download the content without paying anything, it may happen that your photos have a greater use. If on any occasion you want to avoid this and make your publications more exclusive without spending too much time on them, you can also search the Internet for this type of platforms with a payment option where you will have to pay a small fee to download some of their photographs.
And if you want to buy these types of images directly from other photographers, we are going to share with you an article where we introduce you to several stock photographers.
>> Stock photography: meet several photographers specialising in this highly profitable subject area
24 image banks that will surprise you
Here we are going to present 24 image banks where the photographs are of great quality and the variety of photos is very extensive. We hope you find this compilation very useful and we recommend that you keep it safe for future reference.
1# PixaBay (pixabay.com)
Pixabay is a vibrant image bank of creators sharing royalty-free images and videos. In addition, all content published is licensed under Creative Commons CC0, making it safe to use without asking permission or giving remuneration to the artist. Even when they are for commercial purposes.
Moreover, on this page you will be able to search by file type (photos, illustrations, vectors, videos), so you will be able to refine what you are looking for. The quality and originality of the photographs that are totally free from this image bank is incredibly extraordinary. Take a look and let us know. This is, without a doubt, one of the most popular and fastest growing image banks on the market.
2# UnSplash (unsplash.com)
On Unsplash you will be able to find beautiful, high quality free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. No attribution is required on this platform. This is, without a doubt, an impressive bank of free photos uploaded by the world’s most generous community of photographers. Every day fellow photographers from all over the world upload thousands of images to this platform that you will love for your projects.
You can also participate in this great project yourself. If you feel like it, you can even be one of them, just register and let the rest of the world know about your wonderful work. You can upload as many pictures as you want and check if your work is as excellent as you think it is. As soon as you start receiving downloads and acknowledgements you will see that it is and you will get worldwide recognition and visibility. It is undoubtedly one of the best image banks today.
And if you want to sell your images without having to pay commissions to third parties, at Arcadina we offer you a business solution that is ideal for you. This is the online shop or public galleries where you can put your best photographs on sale and keep 100% of the commission.
>> Strategies to sell my photos online without paying third party commissions
3# Free for commercial use (freeforcommercialuse.net)
Free for Comeercial use is an awesome lifestyle photo bank where you are going to find very creative and trendy pictures. Authentic images for your next commercial or personal project that are totally free to use.
On this platform you have a high resolution download of 300 dpi even for works that you want to print. You can do whatever you want with the images as they offer a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence, no rights reserved, no copyrights and are fully public domain. Yes, we were thrilled too when we found this genuine image bank.
4# Morgue File (morguefile.com)
In addition to offering numerous photographic archives free of charge, the MorgueFile website has a news channel on art, film, photography, etc. One of the reference image banks, without a doubt, as it is one of the oldest in existence, in operation since 1996, just when the Internet began to take off to become what it is today.
But be careful, it is free but with a “but“, because in order to use your images this platform will ask you to give credit to the original photographer and creator. This is because the photographs really have rights of use but not ownership, so it is advisable that you contact the creator or photographer simply to tell them about the use you are going to make of their photographs. But this is enough, you won’t have any problems.
5# Free Images (formerly Stock.xchng) (freeimages.com)
Free Images has over 350,000 high quality photos from over 30,000 photographers. You’re sure to find the photo you need for your commercial ad or web background. A bank of free photos and illustrations from all categories where you can let your imagination run wild.
On this platform, in addition to the free version (where you can download and use all the photos without any problems), you have a premium option with almost 3 million photos available that will blow your mind. It is undoubtedly a colossal photo bank.
6# DreamsTime (en.dreamstime.com)
If you are looking for a stock photo bank that provides high-quality, royalty-free images, take a look at this platform. Dreamstime is one of the world’s leading image banks in the field of stock photography and certainly one of the most reliable providers of high quality digital images at quite affordable prices.
This website offers an exquisite gallery of images that has been growing steadily since 2000 and where thousands of photographers from all over the world do business by uploading their photographs and videos. Best of all, it has a team of experienced reviewers who are responsible for approving all the images that are uploaded, so its database is of high quality and is renewed daily with new images.
7# iStockPhoto (istockphoto.com/en)
iStockPhoto, one of the oldest stock photo image banks, also offers royalty-free videos, audio and illustrations for the Internet, multimedia files and design elements.
All kinds of artists, designers and photographers from all over the world turn to this platform to create, work and learn. This is a photo bank that will not leave you indifferent and that will make you grow as a professional.
8# ShutterStock (shutterstock.com)
On Shutterstock you will find millions of royalty-free photos, illustrations and vectors. If you visit this platform you will find it very easy to find inspiration thanks to the 10,000 new high-resolution images that are added every day to this leading image bank.
It also has a large and well-known community of users. This website has become an image bank that also includes videos, music and even editable files with templates for your creations and illustrations.
9# Smithsonian (si.edu)
Smithsonian is a relatively new image bank where they have recently released almost 3 million images in both 2D and 3D that have entered the public domain.
On this free photo download platform, you will find a wide range of images on very specific subjects, such as museums, research centres, libraries, archives and zoos. Without a doubt, a large collection of very interesting images for photographers and creatives to use freely.
10# Pexels (pexels.com)
One of the special features offered by the Pexels image bank is that in addition to being able to find photos and videos through a search engine, if you go to the Discover section, this platform will show you a series of collections of images that are related to each other. So if you are not quite sure what kind of image you want to look for, this tab will become a “brainstorming tool” for you.
In Pexels all users, as well as being able to download the free photos they need, will be able to upload their own. Afterwards, the people in charge of managing this image bank will choose the best photographs that have been uploaded by users.
11# Negative Space (negativespace.co)
One of the features that Negative Space’s image bank offers is the ease of searching for photos by theme. If you go to the bottom of the homepage, you will find a selection of the most popular tags, and even a set of shortcuts that will show you a series of photographs by colour.
This free image platform is very much focused on allowing amateur photographers to upload their stock photos. And if you want to be informed of all the new free downloadable images that Negative Space offers, we encourage you to sign up to their subscriber list.
12# Moose (photos.icons8.com)
Moose is an image bank site run by photo icons8 where you can find a large collection of free stock photos.
In addition to having a large number of free downloadable images, another particularity of this online photo platform is its search engine located on the left side of the page, where you can browse free stock photos based on a series of very specific parameters, such as age, ethnicity, hair type, etc.
13# PicJumbo (picjumbo.com)
Led by photographers and with almost 7 million 500 thousand downloads since its launch in 2013, this free online image download platform called Picjumbo offers you a wide variety of free stock photos with the possibility of easy searches thanks to its thematically organised categories.
In Picjumbo you will find a series of images of a great professional quality of all kinds of subjects such as nature, business, gastronomy, etc. and in all of them predominates the great colour and brightness of the free stock photos, a fact to take into account to use them in publications where the important thing is to attract the attention of the public.
14# Flickr (flickr.com)
Flickr is a very select image bank where the first thing you will have to do to enjoy its “tens of billions” of free downloadable photos and its two million groups will be to register. Although if you want to take a look at the (impressive) quality of the free stock photos that you can download on this platform you will also have the option to view them without giving your contact details.
A very interesting feature that Flickr offers you is the amount of additional information it gives you on each of the free downloadable images. For example, where the photo was taken, with what kind of equipment and you can also see comments from users who have already downloaded the stock image.
15# IMAGO (imago-images.com)
IMAGO is a quality image bank where you will find a great quality and diversity of themes in stock photos, such as: winter olympic games 2022, nature, art, business, fashion, education and so on up to more than 30 categories.
IMAGO offers a number of interesting paid packages for downloading images and videos. And thanks to the newsletter, you will be kept up to date with all the latest news.
16# LibreShot (libreshot.com)
In the Libreshot image bank you will find Martin, a marketing expert and photography enthusiast who has created this free image download platform to make his large collection of free downloadable photos available to anyone who needs them.
On this platform you will be able to download all kinds of free stock photos: business, architecture, nature, landscapes and people (among others).
17# Gratisography (gratisography.com)
If you’re looking for a certain type of fun and creative stock photos, the online free photo download platform Gratisography offers all kinds of images for free download with a touch of humour.
On this platform you will be able to find free high resolution photos related to nature, animals, business and gastronomic themes (among others) where originality is the predominant point in each of the free downloadable photos. Undoubtedly, this image platform is the ideal place to look for original and rarely seen photos.
18# PikWizard (pikwizard.com)
Pikwizard is a digital platform for free download of images and videos where besides offering an almost infinite collection of all kinds of landscape, urban and nature photos, you will also find more everyday free images.
Another peculiarity offered by this photo bank with free download, is that it has an image editor integrated in the page itself, so that just before downloading the free photo you will be able to make a series of small retouches to each of the photographs.
19# StockSnap.io (stocksnap.io)
StockSnap.io is a free image bank where you can find all kinds of stock photos that will help you to show a better image of your creative project through your digital media publications.
To facilitate the search for images, on this website you will be able to search for them through its search engine, by categories and by the most downloaded, as one of the characteristics of this free download platform is that it tracks the number of downloads of each image in order to offer its visitors the free photos that are most downloaded by its users.
20# Kaboompics (kaboompics.com)
Kaboompics is a free image download site created by a web designer who in her spare time is dedicated to photography. Karolina, thanks to her work, knows how important images are on a website, and therefore offers on its photo download platform all kinds of free images to be used in any digital media (web, blog, networks).
On this platform you will be able to find a wide variety of stock photos such as landscapes, interiors, people, and it also has a category with featured photos where you will be able to consult the images that are being downloaded the most every day.
21# Life of Pix (lifeofpix.com)
At Life of pix you can download all kinds of images with a certain artistic touch for free. At the head of this free photo download platform is the team of a marketing agency and they are very clear that offering a good image, in many cases, means the success of a transaction.
Another detail to take into account and that you will find on this platform is that in addition to being able to search for images through its search engine or in the gallery section (where the photos are classified by categories), if you go to the photographers section, you will be able to see (and download) the images that each photographer has uploaded. This way if you like the style of a particular photographer, you will be able to download all the stock photos they upload to Life of pix.
22# FreePik (freepik.es)
On the Freepik free image download website, in addition to being able to find all kinds of stock photos to download for free, you will be able to find a series of customisable icons, templates for presentations, editable illustrations, collections (ideal for use in different online media), PSD files and vectors. All of them with the option of free download.
In the section of photos / categories, you will have the option to search for the photographs that most interest you depending on the theme you need. As a curiosity, in this free image bank you will be able to download abstract photographs, related to the performing arts, or even textures such as wood or water, and if you are a creative and need more coverage of this interesting website, in Freepik you will find a Premium service with almost 8,000,000 resources for only €9.99 per month.
23# StockVault (stockvault.net)
The truth is that in every season a series of themes emerge with respect to the photos that are trending in society. Whether it is due to the direct influence of fashions or due to some kind of current news or important event. The reality is that every few months a series of trends come to light that become trending topics on the networks.
Therefore, if you are looking for this type of free downloadable photographs with a very specific theme, on the Stockvault website you will be able to search for images by number of downloads or the most popular ones, on this page you will find it very easy.
If you go to their “about us” section you will see that these professionals have focused this free image download site primarily on photographers, designers and students. What’s more, at Stockvault, if you register, you will have the option to upload your own stock photos.
24# New York Public Library (digitalcollections)
And to finish with this compilation of image banks we go to the website of the New York Public Library, where you can find all kinds of books, music and films (among other things), if you do a little research you will discover a small corner full of real works of art. We are talking about the possibility of downloading for free almost 900,000 old photographs with interesting themes such as: New York City, fashion, nature, manuscripts, the history of the gay & lesbian community, images related to the world of entertainment, old posters, maps, illustrations, video films and many other themes.
Without a doubt, this section of the New York Public Library, more than a stock photo bank, is a huge historical database where every day you will be able to find, thanks to its keyword search engine, some new photo or other.
Arcadina’s guide to the best image banks of the moment
Image banks can be very useful to get some quality graphic content without having to invest your valuable time in creating it. They can also be a good tool to sell your images, although if you want to keep 100% of the profits, you can use our public galleries for sale.
It should be noted that Arcadina does not have any commercial agreement with any of the photo and video banks mentioned in this article. This post has been created with the sole intention of advising and helping the community of photographers users to find quality photos for their professional needs. Or to publish their own images and creations.
If you haven’t yet tried our public sales galleries or the other business solutions we have created specifically for photographers, you have 14 days to get to know them in depth.
Today we are going to share with you the interview of the photographer Fran Ortiz Retratista.
>> Fran Ortiz, Arcadina Ambassador and renowned wedding photographer
And to say goodbye, we would like to know if you have ever resorted to image banks to get photos for your publications. We’ll read you in the comments.
Arcadina goes with you
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