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Are you looking for free stock photos? Where to find royalty free stock images to complement your website, an important article, essay or news report is already a challenge for many people. Imagine when the goal is not only to find free images, but also royalty free photos that you can openly use without needing to pay royalties or one-time publishing rights. Luckily there are many online directories of free images for websites like yours that come to rescue.
Photo credit: Darren Hester
Nonetheless finding royalty free stock images may seem, at first, a tough task to carry out, there are quite a number of online resources available today where you can browse and download beautiful stock photos that are completely free to use for personal and, often, also for commercial purposes.
These resources offer a great assortment of quality free images and are establishing as a valuable alternative to traditional stock photo libraries.
You can find everything from quality photos, vector images or cliparts to textures and line drawings.
By taking advantage of the world of royalty free stock photography you can stop relying on Google to find the images you need and you also respect author's copyright by downloading only legal free images that you can re-use at your own leisure.
As long as your customers or you do not require photos of art masterpieces, you might find interesting visual alternatives by exploring the world of free and grassroots image clearinghouses.
But before leaving you to the extensive list of royalty free stock images, I would like to share with you two important recommendations, both for online publishers and photographers:
Online publishers: No matter which sources you use, I recommend always crediting and where possible, informing the authors that their work has been used and published somewhere. To someone who has been so generous to offer her creative work for your own use, it is not much to offer full credit, acknowledgment, a link back and information about where the image is used. Doing this way, you also allow photographers to show potential customers how their work is used.
Photographers: The ageless issue of "How do I get work as a photographer if everyone wants me to have some experience and credential first?" is finally solved. Expose some of your good photographic work for others to use and leverage the good exposure, visibility and credentials generated by this to build your reputation and price when bidding for work.
Do you know other resources to find stock photos? If so, please let me know in the comment section.
116) Corbis Images
http://www.corbisimages.com/
Corbis Images, one of the leading stock photography sites on the market, has a whole area dedicated exclusively to royalty free stock photos that you can download to enrich both your personal and commercial design projects. Registration is compulsory to purchase the images.
You can either buy single images or whole collections of images which belong to several categories like sports, nature, Industry and more. All royalty free images are in high-quality and available in different sizes. The lightbox feature lets you conveniently bokmark images as you browse the archive for later purchase or to checkout all your stock photos in one shot.
115) ImageTemple
http://www.imagetemple.com/
ImageTemple is a stock photography site that hosts a large collection of royalty free stock photos that you can use for both personal and commercial web design projects. Registration is not required to browse the gallery and download free images.
All images are in high-quality (1600x1200) and in one size. To save the free images you need, just click on the picture with the right mouse button and choose "Save picture as...". No search function is available.
Photographers are also welcome to contribute their own stock photos to ImageTemple gallery.
114) StickStock
http://www.stickstock.com/
StickStock provides a royalty free stock photo collection that you can use for both personal and commercial web design projects. Registration is not required.
All images are in high-quality and you can download every image by itself or as part of a zipped file that contains all other images grouped in the same category. No search function is available.
Photographers can also contribute their own stock photos, which will appear on the website once the administrator approves the pictures.
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