Where can I get copyright free images? It’s a question that goes through every journalist’s head at some point, whether they’re trying to grow their social media engagement, visualise data, perform online investigations, or do pretty much anything – especially at smaller publications. Readers or viewers will want more than just words.
With budgets being cut, and audiences wanting more media than ever before, finding free-to-use images is becoming more important. It can be too expensive to send a photographer out with a journalist for any story, let alone afford a subscription to Getty Images or PA.
So, to help out those who are scouring the Internet in search of that one royalty free photo of the Queen, here are the top sites to find copyright-free photos and images.
Getty Images
By far the most wide-ranging and useful copyright free images can be found at Getty Images. The company has been supplying journalists and businesses with photos, for a hefty subscription fee, for 25 years.
However, it is possible to use their 66 million image library without paying! There’s just one little catch: it can’t be for commercial use.
So, if you’re just writing a blog with no intention of monetising, or wanting to start a non-commercial website, you can use their embed tool found here. Easy to use, you simply search for what you want, select your image, and then copy the embed code into your blog or website.
Where can I find copyright free images for commercial use?
This may be your next question. There are many options for finding images and photos that can be used commercially, but don’t go in expecting the same high quality and plethora of options that you would from a subscription service.
In addition, it is always difficult to find non-stock photos (i.e. of specific people and places). As such, best practice may be to save several of these sites to search through, creating a ‘jigsaw’ of coverage with their libraries.
Also, if you were thinking of trying to sell on these free images, that’s not OK with any of the outlets.
Flickr
Although very popular, and containing an almost endless library of images uploaded by account holders, Flickr can be a dangerous site to use for finding photos for your blog or site.
While many may believe that images on the site are free-to-use, it is actually only if they have their licence listed as Creative Commons – which not all do. You can find photos that are in this category by using the advanced search option.
With stock images and photos of specific locations, Flickr can be very useful – but make sure you check the licence before you embed any photos.
Pexels
All images on Pexels are usable as long as they aren’t used in a way that paints ‘identifiable’ people in a bad light – which they define as including “engaging in criminal activities, suffering from a medical ailment, or in a pornographic context.”
Images that don’t include people can be used with anything.
Claiming to have over one million ‘royalty free’ images, this makes the database a great source for stock photos – as long as you’re not writing about a touchy subject. It doesn’t have much in the way of images of specific people or places.
Pixabay
Pixabay says that it has even more images than Pexel, with over 1.8 million. Similarly, it has a rule not allowing ‘identifiable’ people to be painted in a bad light.
However, it also urges users not to use images with ‘identifiable’ brands to create a misleading association with a product or service. So, no pretending your sport blog is sponsored by Nike.
Overall, a very similar service to Pexel, but perhaps with slightly more choice. There are some images of specific people and places, but many are dated and there aren’t many options.
Unsplash
Unsplash alleges to have a bigger library again, with over two million images available. This time, the only limits they have are using the pictures to create your own free image library, and making viewers think they are seeing a trademark.
Similar to Pixabay in its options available, there are plenty of stock photos as well as a few of those highly sought-after images of specific people and places.
Geograph
If you really need your image to be of that one place, and it’s in the UK, then this could be your saviour. Although a great many of the images aren’t that exciting, Geograph is an organisation aiming to picture every square kilometre in the UK.
Sponsored by the Ordnance Survey, the library’s many users upload photos of the grid squares covering the UK, and all of these images are available for free. It’s an amazing resource for news reporters needing an image of a specific location for free, or one that isn’t famous enough to be covered by even the bigger subscription image services.
Other services
There are a whole host of sites offering copyright-free images, and they couldn’t be listed here. Largely they offer the same services as those above, but with smaller libraries, or focusing on only stock photos.
These include Shopify-owned Burst, which offers images for businesses to use with products – but that could work for journalism in certain circumstances. There are over 300,000 images at freeimages.com – which have a few more caveats than the ones above but are OK for most journalism, and a few others with smaller libraries focused on stock images such as Kaboompics, Stocksnap, Canva, and Life of Pix.
Two particularly interesting smaller options are WOCinTEch – which came to an end in 2016 but continues to store images of women of colour who work in tech – and Jopwell – which has photos of the Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Native American students and professionals who are part of its community. Both of these could be useful if you want to show more diversity and encourage underrepresented groups with your images.