Where to Find Free Pictures for your Websites

byboomergp08

31.2K followers

Updated 8 years ago

One of the most pressing problems for those of us that build our own websites is finding free pictures and images to use within our content. Naturally if you can take your own pictures you would be able to avoid the hassles. But the majority of us do not take our own pictures for various reasons.

Perhaps you are in a niche that doesn't have any particular kind of product associated with it, like a medical issue such as Alzheimer's. In situations like this you would need to use pictures of elderly people, pictures and diagrams of the human brain, and even doctors and scientists in white lab coats.

But where do you locate these pictures and images for your website? The first thing many people think of is to use Google Images to find photos that they can use. However this is THE WRONG THING TO DO. The majority of images on Google are not free for you to use.

WHY AVOID GOOGLE IMAGES?

You can find free photos on Google Images but you will have to go through a multi-step process to determine if they are truly free for you to use. Then after finding the group of so-called free images, which is normally 1/10th of the non-free images, you will then have to verify if the free images need attribution and under what circumstances in regards to their license.

This is a process that can take up so much time, especially if you do not quite know what to look for and how to find it. Plus you will have to understand what each of the Creative Commons and Public Domain licenses mean in relation to you using the photographs and clipart in your website content. But there is an easier way.

CREATIVE COMMONS 0 & PUBLIC DOMAIN

The easiest and fastest way to find free images for your websites is to seek out photograph and image resource directory websites that display CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) and/or PD (Public Domain) photos. Pictures that fall under these two licenses do not require any attribution and are free to use.

NOTE: The best kind to use is CC0 because these are accepted world-wide as free to use without any attribution. Whereas PD, though also free to use without attribution, is not always accepted as free world-wide. Where PD images may be free in the majority of countries, they could not be free in a handful of countries. This is why CC0 was created and IS ACCEPTED as free world-wide.

WHERE TO FIND FREE PICTURES FOR YOUR WEBSITES

There are dozens of free images resource directory websites on the internet to choose from, and you will find that many of them share some of the same photographs. But a majority of them will also have a unique set of images that only they have. The most difficult part for you is to find which resource directory website to use.

On my WA promotional website I have a page with a list of 24 different links to free images resource directory websites. I have also provided those links here within WA in two of my training tutorials, see links below. These links are to websites that display mainly CC0 free pictures and a few that display PD free photos as well.

Free Pictures and Images for your Website Part 1

In the above link I provide you with 12 links to free CC0 and PD directories. I also provide you with an easy way to compress the photo memory size down so that it does not take up too much memory and make your website run slower. One thing to remember, the majority of pictures you will download from these directories will be large mega pixel images with 1mb (One Megabyte) and up in size.

You should always use images on your website that are in the kb (kilobytes) range because they will be smaller in memory size. This will NOT reduce the image quality, especially if the image being used is in the jpg or png formats. Every Windows PC has a free application called MS Paint which can be easily used to compress the image memory size down. I also explain how to do this at the link above.

More Free Pictures and Images for your Website Part 2

In the above link I provide for you another 12 different resource directory websites of both CC0 and PD photos. I also go into further detail as to why CC0 is better than PD images. In addition I inform you that the 11 photos I used within the training are all CC0 and you are free to use them if you want by just copying them via a right-click on your mouse.

Even the pictures I have used in this blog are free to use. If you want to use them, go right ahead and copy them.