Where To Find Free Pictures For Your Articles

The next time you need a picture for an article, don't waste your money paying for one. Instead, check out one of these websites for free professional pictures.

FreeDigitalPhotos: This is the first website I turn to when I need a picture for an article. They have thousands of professional photos and illustrations to choose from. Every single picture is free and available to use commercially (except at Zazzle and CafePress). You can get a small version (usually around 268 X 400) to use for free and the larger ones start at just $3. If you choose to use the free version, you'll need to attribute the photo. But they make that easy by giving you the attribution html to copy and paste.

This truly is a great site! Look at the quality of their pictures below and then go check them out at freedigitalphotos.net. You don't even need to register!

Image: renjith krishnan

Image: Suat Eman

Use images from AllPosters

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Search your affiliate products

When searching for pictures for your articles, always look at your affiliate sites first. A lot of them sell posters, pictures and postcards. These can all be used as images for your article. Plus you get the added bonus of getting a possible sale!

StockFreeImages

This is another great website for free pictures. They have hundreds of thousands of pictures you can download and use for free. They allow limited commercial use so make sure to read their TOS if you want to use a picture for something other than your article. They require you to register an account with them before downloading a picture and the only way you can use these pictures is if you attribute them (and StockFreeImages is kind of picky about how you do it). Your attribution link must include a copyright symbol, the photographer username and the website name. For example: © Photographer name / StockFreeImages.com

The pictures vary in quality but most look professional. These are a couple of pictures I found on their website. To see more, head on over to StockFreeImages.com.

Amazon has images (posters)

Dreamstime

A lot of people just skip over this website when they're looking for free pictures because the only way to use most of the photos is if you pay for them. But they also have thousands of pictures available for free. They're all available for commercial use, although the license is slightly different from the pay-to-use pictures.To use them, you have to create an account and fill out your user profile. Then you can search through their free images and download any you want to use. They require the usual type of attribute link: © Photographer name / Dreamstime.com

You'll find a very wide variety of pictures here and most of them look professional. These two photos should give you an idea as to the quality you'll find. Here's where you'll find the rest of the free pictures on Dreamstime.com.

Don't forget about Zazzle!

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Pixabay

This website is where you look for pictures that don't need to be attributed. These are all in the public domain and able to be used commercially without a link back. The quality varies from professional to hobby photographer, but that's good because not every article calls for professional pictures. Although they have a large variety of pictures, you don't get a lot of pictures to choose from. I just searched for "girl", which usually brings hundreds and sometimes even thousands of results on other websites, but only gave me 23 results on Pixaby.

Here are two good quality pictures I found. If you're looking for attribution free pictures that you don't have to pay for, search Pixabay.com.

More Websites for Free Pictures

Advanced search engines, lower quality pictures, etc

Free Images on Fotolia
Most of the images on Fotolia can only be used if you purchase them. But they have some (15 as I'm writing this) that are available for free.

Creative Commons
This website lets you enter a search term and then pulls all the pictures with that keyword that are labeled with a Creative Commons license.

Google Advanced Image Search
Enter your search terms and then scroll to the bottom of the page. Check the boxes next to "Only images labeled for reuse" and "Commercial use"

MorgueFile
This website lets you search for free photos. Each photo has it's own license, but the terms are clearly explained for each one so you know whether or not you need to attribute.

Flickr Advanced Search
Using Flickr's advanced search, you can set it to only search for CC content that can be used commercially. Just scroll to the bottom and check the appropriate boxes.

HTML Code for Attributing a Picture (on other websites)

This will give you a centered picture with the attribution link directly under it

<p align=center><img src="IMAGE.JPG"> <br><a href="http://www.IMAGE-SOURCE.com" target="_blank">© Photographer / Website.com</a></p>

HTML Code for Attributing a Picture (on Wizzley)

This will give you a centered picture with the attribution link directly under it

<img style="float: none; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" alt="" height="300" src="http://IMAGE.jpg" width="400" /> <a href="http://www.IMAGE-SOURCE.com" target="_blank">© Photographer / Website.com</a>

It will end up looking like this!

Get Millions of Free Photos!

Kodak Easyshare C195 Digital Camera (Red)

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The best way to get free pictures is to take them yourself!

The camera on the left is the exact same one I use. It's a Kodak Easyshare C195. It has 14MP, 5X optical zoom (which is awesome), and 22 different scene choices, plus a "smart capture" mode that does my thinking for me.

I love this camera! Even though it's not one of those expensive cameras with 409 different features, it still takes great photos. It has a fast shutter time so I don't miss the "quick" shots. And the macro feature captures every single detail with my up close shots.

Even with my camera, I still find it necessary to sometimes use pictures from these free photo sites. But at least now, I don't depend on them.

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Updated: 09/05/2012, Othercat

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What website do you recommend for free pictures?

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picdrome on 07/20/2012

Hi and thank you for the article!
I can also add http://www.picdrome.com, a growing Public Domain picture collection, free of copyright and licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication. All items are free to download for personal and commercial use, without restriction and are available in high definition. New photos are added on a daily basis.

terrilorah on 03/19/2012

This is very useful, thanks for all the tips! I was just going to one of these sites and had no clue there was so many others.

Othercat on 02/11/2012

bizilady, I'm not saying people should actually take images from Zazzle. But Zazzle has a lot of posters, postcards, and other products that can be advertised on our articles. These can be used in lieu of pictures and as a bonus, you might also earn money from a sale.

Guest on 02/11/2012

You can get free images from zazzle? Did I understand this correctly? I am on zazzle and the owners are trying more stringent guidelines against this.

Sheri_Oz on 01/21/2012

This is great - I happen to have some photos on dreamstime and one of them is free to download by anyone.
This is important information to have and so well presented. Thanks.

Sara on 01/10/2012

Just what I was looking for. Thanks a bunch.

whitemoss on 01/10/2012

Really clear and useful info.

jblack on 01/08/2012

Thank you for some very useful pointers! I only knew of a few of the sites you listed and am really happy to learn about all the new ones you mentioned. Great article!