Looking to find copyright free images to use in your blogs, websites or social media posts? The following sites are the best on the internet.

Do you frequently share images online? If so, it’s essential to have a virtual Rolodex of go-to websites to quickly find images. It’s also important that you have websites in which the legal restrictions are clear and concise.

Below you will find my go-to list of the best sources, hand-picked and vetted to a strict set of standards. I’ve included some of my favorite paid resources as well.

I update this post regularly with new resources. If you want to be notified when something new is added, be sure to subscribe to my Insiders list by adding your email below.

Copyright Free Images Galore

The following sites are the best places I’ve found online to get royalty free images. I have sorted through dozens of sites to bring you the best of the best. This will save you time and potential frustration.

You shouldn’t have to spend an hour and a half looking for the perfect image for your next epic blog post. These sites I’ve listed had to pass a certain number of criteria:

1. Great selection of images
2. High-quality photography
3. Copyright free or CC0 licensed
4. Great search functionality
5. Easy to navigate quickly
6. Safe for work (and kids)

Each site I list below will pass all of these criteria with flying colors.

About Copyright Free and CC0 Images

It’s important to note that the most important aspect is the copyright free or CC0 criteria. In case you’re not familiar with these terms, I wanted to explain them a bit.

When photographers upload their images to the internet, they are the copyright owner. They have certain enforceable rights that protect people from using their photos without their permission. If you are found using their copyrighted photography without permission, they can take legal action against you or your business.

A photo that is labeld “CC0” (Creative Commons Zero) means that the original photographer has willingly waived their copyright to it. That image is free to use for personal and commercial use. You don’t need to pay royalties, give attribution, or get permission.

Just because an image is marked “copyright free” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s 100% free to use. Some may require you to give attribution or pay a small fee.

Without further ado, here is my go-to list of copyright free image sites.

Unsplash

This was a small free photo project that turned into an absolute behemoth of a website. It is now one of the most popular sites on the internet. Unsplash is home to more copyright free photos than you could even know what to do with.

Unsplash started as a simple Tumblr site posting 10 new photos every 10 days. It has turned into a place where you could spend hours and never need to go elsewhere for your image hunting.

Photographers upload their work to Unsplash where a team of editors review each submission. If the photo passes their high standards, the photo is made available. Photographers also can have profiles on Unsplash, which is a great incentive for them to upload their best work.

Attribution is not required for using Unsplash images, but they do encourage it.

Image restrictions: CC0

Burst (by Shopify)

The site is laid out beautifully. Burst give you the ability to sort through new photos, popular collections, or perform a search for specific image keywords.

Shopify claims they are uploading new photos to the site every week. A big improvement from when they first launched with new photos every couple of weeks.

It is targeted at entrepreneurs and business owners looking for stock photography, but certainly, anyone can use them.

Image restrictions: CC0

Pexels

Pexels began as an aggregator of copyright free photos from other sites. They abandoned that model and instead created their own library of images like Unsplash.

They are now my second favorite place to find images. The majority of the photography on Pexels is very high-quality. They have a similar approval process for photography submitted on the site.

It’s easy to search, updates with new photos daily and has a very large library.

Image restrictions: CC0

Reshot

Simple and elegant looking website, with a good search function that points to well tagged images.

What’s interesting though, is their “Quick Image Packs” where you can download a set number of images that revolve around a certain theme.

All they require for you to download these image packs is to Tweet about the site. This action is made easy by a “Tweet to Download” button on the pack you want to get.

Current packs available are:

• Diversity Matters Pack
• Active Lifestyle Pack
• Everyday Technology Pack
• Flat Lay Pack

I hope they add to their packs as this is a really great concept, and something I find myself needing more and more.

Image restrictions: CC0

Libre Stock

If you’d like a centralized place, much like Pexels, to search all the best free image sites using an intelligent tagging system.

The search engine is powerful. When you click on an image in the search results you are taken to the photo on the site it originated from.

Image restrictions: CC0 (but be sure to check the site you’re downloading from)

PicJumbo

A project of Viktor Hanacek, designer, who understands the importance of high quality images in a designer’s life. New photos are uploaded daily.

Fantastic work, and completely copyright free. There is a paid membership for $6/month if you want even more from Viktor.

Image restrictions: CC0

Barn Images

A relatively new resource, this site is owned and operated by two photographers who set out “with the hope of redefining traditional stock imagery.” They publish new, free photos every weekday and are dedicated to high quality, non-stock images.

Despite the name, the site is not dedicated to images of barns. It has a vast diversity of fresh, high-quality images that are great for use with your website, blog or social media projects.

Images restrictions: None

Gratisography

A personal project of Ryan McGuire of Bells Design. Very beautiful high-resolution images added weekly, completely free of copyright.

What I like most about this site is the personality and uniqueness of the photographer’s style. Very fun and a tad bit quirky.

Image restrictions: CC0

Pixabay

A collection of images that are personally uploaded by contributors under Creative Commons Public Domain. The site functions beautifully and has great navigation, sorting, and searching functions.

One of the features I like about Pixabay is the ability to filter your searches by landscape or portrait images. This is helpful when you’re looking for a very specific image orientation.

Image restrictions: CC0

Compfight

Compfight allows you to search through Flickr’s Creative Commons listed photos. It’s pretty simple to use and will automatically generate the HTML code to insert photo credit.

It can be a bit buggy sometimes, so you may be better off going straight to Flickr.com. Once there you can do an advanced search for Creative Commons photos.

Image restrictions: Depends

Morguefile

This is a big searchable database of free images. It also has some great filtering options to really find the photos you’re looking for.

Image restrictions: CC0

New Old Stock

Another Tumblr powered site, New Old Stock features “vintage photos from public archives”. A great place to find authentically vintage looking imagery.

Image restrictions: Public Domain

Death to the Stock Photo

Their mission is to “make the internet more beautiful”. This is an email subscription that sends you free curated photo packs every month.

They also do the occasional paid pack that is usually from a trip they are taking. Their photography is always top notch.

Image restrictions: Limited (but more than fair)

Jay Mantri

Yet another Tumblr based photo archive. I recently discovered this site and love the creator’s style.

No notes about how often he updates it but his only request is that you “make magic” with them.

Image restrictions: CC0

Kaboompics

Also newly discovered, I found this site to be easy to search and photos are well tagged, much like on Pexels.

Image restrictions: CC0

Albumarium

Now here’s a site with a very interesting take on the world of free images. All images are organized into albums (hence the name Albumarium). Instead of searching for photos, you search for albums.

This is very helpful for when you’re looking for more than one image under the same theme. Let’s say you need 3-4 photos that need to look like they were taken by the same person. Or maybe you want them to look like they were taken in the same setting. Albumarium is exactly what you need.

Other sites offer a similar “packs” model, but most of those are paid only.

Image restrictions: CC2.0

Life of Pix

Very simple site, updated regularly with new high-resolution images that are free to use and share. The search function works well, but I’d love to see the search function work with the grid layout. As of now, when you search you only get one-column results and that can be a bit tedious.

Image restrictions: CC0

Paid Stock Images

If you really want to ensure your image hunting is legal and time-efficient, you can always utilize one of the many stock image sites. These are sites that offer royalty free stock photos for purchase.

This is the best solution if you have a professional blog and you want the highest quality selection without any potential legal issues.

Shutterstock

Shutterstock boasts an insane amount of royalty free images that you can purchase for a good price. They also have a wide variety of illustrations, graphics, and icons you can choose from as well.

A noteworthy feature is their Shutterstock Editor Pro image editor. It is perfect for those who want to create quick image edits for various purposes. You can make the edits right inside the web app before downloading.

Super convenient.

The good folks of Shutterstock have also partnered with me here at Dustn.tv, allowing me to have generous access to 25 downloads per day. This partnership had no effect on their placement in this article. (They didn’t even ask to be mentioned.)

iStockPhoto

iStockPhoto is the leading stock image site on the internet. They have a huge selection of royalty free images for purchase. But don’t let that intimidate you because their search filtering options make it pretty easy to narrow down your searches.

Their downside is that they use a credit system as opposed to a straight dollar amount. This makes calculating costs a bit more difficult.

Photo Dune

Not quite as big of a selection as iStockPhoto but they are my personal preference. I prefer them because the payment system is in dollars rather than credits, so you know exactly how much you’re paying for each photo.

Social Media Images + Graphics: SoVisual.co

If you’re a social media manager, you’ll want to take a look at SoVisual.co. It is not a library of individual photos like all the other sites. Instead it offers bundles of social media graphics for purchase.

Because let’s face it–most of you reading this blog post are sourcing images to use on social media. And what do you have to do once you find them? You have to pull them into a graphic design app and take the time to design something.

SoVisual.co saves you tons of time in that aspect.

Each bundle or “Social Pack” comes with 30 days of social media images and content. Each day has one graphic in four different sizes. Additionally, each size has both a version with text, and without text so you can truly get the most out of every post.

This makes creating a consistent content calendar as easy as possible. And I must say (as a completely biased founder) I think these packs are pretty stellar.

Lightstock

Some of the highest quality Christian photography you will find on the internet. Period.

The prices aren’t cheap, but neither is the quality of the photos. If you’re looking for the best premium quality Christian-oriented photography, this is the place to go.

Enough free photo sites?

This list is constantly updated, and I only add the best of the best copyright free image sites to this list.

So if you have something that isn’t mentioned in this list, let me know in the comments below. I will review and consider your suggestion, but I don’t promise all of them will make it.

Do you have any free image resources that you would add to the list? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Everyone is doing visual content these days. Follow these image creation tips and leave them in the dust.

Smart bloggers, social media stars and marketers alike have caught on to the visual content trend. Have you?

It’s clear that visual content allows you to grab more eyeballs, yields more engagement and performs better long-term for your digital marketing efforts. But the longer this trend is around, the harder it will become to stand out.

And for most bloggers and social media pros, creating images or social media graphics is time consuming and tedious work.

With this post, I hope to help you create a workflow and give you some tips to help you create and optimize your social media images.

You can almost call this a minimum viable workflow for social media images. And I’m telling you first-hand, it works!

Step 1: Choose Your Tools

Every good artist or craftsman needs to have good tools. And there are different tools for different jobs. Furthermore, there are different tools for different people for different jobs.

You may not feel as comfortable with some tools, but thrive with others. That’s okay. The key is to find the tools that work best for you.

For the sake of time, I’m going to stick to the three tools that I believe are the most effective for different reasons and use cases.

• SoVisual.co: Simplest to use.
• Canva: Moderate ease of use, moderate control.
• Photoshop: Hardest to use (if you’re not experienced), maximum control.

For more tools take a look at my list of desktop tools and mobile tools for image creation.

The above-mentioned tools will work for the majority of people’s needs, so I recommend giving them all a try and seeing which one you feel most comfortable with.

Step 2: Decide the Content

What are you going to put on the social media image? Will it be quote? Will it be the title of a blog post?

Or in other words, what is the message you’re trying to get across?

You need to know what your content is going to be first and foremost because the point of a good visual, above all else, is to communicate a message.

But knowing the content isn’t the only thing you should have in mind. You also want to know and understand the emotional tone behind it.

Understanding the emotional tone will help you sort more quickly through some of the elements that will go into creating the visual such as:

• Typography: Certain fonts will communicate different emotional tones
• Color: Colors communicate to our brain and can instantly put the viewer in an emotional state
• Imagery: The photos or dominant graphic(s) you use can have a significant effect on the tone

Know your message, know the tone you want to set, and then proceed to the next step.

Step 3: Source the Images

If you are going to add imagery as a background or visual accompaniment to the message, you will want to have a handful of go-to resources to find and discover images.

You can of course use one of my top sites to find free images post. I also recommend using your browser’s Favorites or Bookmarks feature to save your preferred places to sources images.

A few tips to keep in mind when sourcing your images:

• Remember the tone of your message (as I said above) and make sure the image you use connects in some way.
• Always make sure the image you’re using is legal to use— don’t just use any old image you find on Google search.
• Make sure the image you source is a minimum of 2000px wide and 1080px tall. More on this later.

It’s really easy to find yourself spending an hour just looking for the “perfect” image. This can be a huge time-suck. And the next time you need to create an image, you’ll dread it because you’ll remember how time-consuming this part can be.

So set that time limit (10 minutes) and decide that you will find an image in that amount of time.

Step 4: Put it Together

Using the basic rules of visual content creation, it’s time to make your graphic piece. This is where the real work begins.

To get the most bang for your buck (so-to-speak) you need to create a minimum of 3 sizes for this image:

• Landscape (1200×630)
• Portrait (1080×1350)
• Square (1080×1080)

But if you have the extra time and energy, I also recommend making a 1920×1080 version. This is the perfect 16:9 ratio image that has the most universal visual appeal. The only places it can’t be used are as a Facebook Open Graph image and on Instagram. Everywhere else online, it works like a charm.

Now, it also helps if you have already gotten your hands on some social media image templates to make this process more streamlined. While 2/3 of the tools I will talk about below will have templates for you, it’s still good to have your needed sizes in mind.

Using SoVisual.co

SoVisual.co is the newest visual content creation tool on the market. It offers the simplest (and fastest) process for creating images. However, it also offers the least amount of control over the creation process.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

SoVisual.co gives you access to a huge library of professionally made design templates. You browse through the feed, select the design you like, and then you can customize the content. You can customize:

Once you’ve done that, you can instantly have the app crank out 3-5 different sizes made to cover all your bases in social media. That is where this tool really shines.

By automatically taking care of the primary design elements and resizing for each network for you, you save a ton of time.

The drawback is you have less control over modifying the size of text, spacing, positioning and other design elements. If you’re just looking to get the job done and not fiddle with tiny details, this is probably the best tool for you.

Using Canva

This is like the best of both worlds tool. Canva gives you all the tools you need to customize your image without being overwhelming.

You can start with one of their size templates and then chose from their professionally designed layouts. Once you pick a layout, you can customize pretty much everything about it.

Now, you don’t have as many fine-tuning design controls as you would with Photoshop, but that is both a strength and a weakness of the tool. Enough to do what you want, but not enough to suck you into a black hole of options exploring and tweaking.

However, unless you have Canva for Work, you will not have the ability to automatically resize images for all your social media needs. The free Canva user will need to create each size image separately.

This can be a lot more work. If you’re going to be creating a lot of images for social media, then Canva for Work is definitely worth the cost.

Using Photoshop

If you’re using Photoshop, you have a full suite of design tools to fine-tune and customize your images to every last detail. It is the most popular design standard software used by professional designers for decades.

However, unless you have been using Photoshop for a while, you may get overwhelmed by how many options. The learning curve is quite steep and it could take you a year or so working with it to get comfortable and quick.

Now, using Photoshop there is a trick you can use when creating your social media images.

A while back I discovered the glorious world of Photoshop scripts. Basically, if you’re familiar with javascript you can create scripts that will automate certain things in Photoshop.

One particularly helpful script I discovered is called Duplicate to All and it allows you to select a layer and have it duplicated (pasted) to every open file.

So here’s how this workflow works:

• Open 4 separate photoshop templates (mentioned above).
• Create the image on the biggest template (1920×1080).
• Once finished with that one, put all layers into a group and use the Duplicate to All script to place that group on all templates.
• Tweak the layers on each file to make it line up correctly for each different template.
• Save each template separately (JPEG and PSD versions).

This might actually seem like more work, but I’ve found it to be a much better workflow. You not only get better results, but you have a PSD for each version so you can always reopen if you need to make changes.

Step 5: Optimizing Images

There are two things that we need to talk about when optimizing your images. The first is pretty obvious to some, but the second may not be.

• File size optimization
• Search engine optimization

Both of these steps are a crucial part in making sure your images are giving you the greatest return on investment.

Image File Size Optimization

Everyone knows that a slow loading page is not ideal for user experience. It’s also bad for SEO. So when adding images to a blog post or page, you want them to be as lightweight as possible without losing image quality.

Even if you’re only planning on sharing these images on social media, you still want to optimize them to be as lightweight as possible. Why?

When you upload an image to a social network, they are going to optimize it themselves. If your image file size is massive and unoptimized, the more the network will have to do in order to reduce its size and loading time. And you can’t always trust them to preserve the image quality that you’ve worked so hard on.

Facebook is especially brutal when it comes to image quality loss.

So do some of the work up front and you’ll save as much quality loss as possible.

Reducing File Size with Photoshop

If you’re using Photoshop, you have a bit of control in reducing the file size when you “Save for Web and Devices”.

Your first step is to choose between saving as a JPEG or PNG. Depending on the image, one may be better than the other. So first select PNG and take a look at how big the file size will be. Then switch to JPEG and see what the file size will be.

With JPEG selected you can also tweak the quality settings to reduce the file size further. I don’t recommend going below 70% or else you will likely see a visible degrading of quality.

After looking at these settings, choose the file type that has the lowest file size.

Other Tools to Reduce File Size

There are plenty of apps, plugins and web services that will help you reduce your file sizes even further. Here are some recommended tools:

• Kracken.io
• JPEGmini
• Smush.it
• Image Optimzer
• CompressNow

Personally, I use JPEGmini and that’s all I need. If you’re not a Mac user though, this will not be an option for you.

Image Search Engine Optimization

Many people overlook this step because they simply aren’t aware of how powerful it can be. They also don’t realize just how big a problem it is to have poor image seo.

Trust me, optimizing your images for search can not only improve your overall search ranking, but can drive traffic as well.

This, of course, only applies if you’re loading them on your blog, but it’s a good habit nonetheless.

Optimize Your Filename

First, be sure that your filename contains a descriptive keyword or phrase that summarizes the image. So if your image is a meme of Yoda, name it something like yoda-choose-meme.jpg.

Don’t make it super long, just enough to get the job done.

Add the Alt Tag

The Alt tag is primarily used by screen readers for the visually impaired. This is is meant to describe the image in a useful way to someone (or something) that can’t actually see the image.

In WordPress it’s very easy to set an Alt tag when you upload an image. Do this every single time. No exceptions.

This is not only good for the visually imaired and search engines but if anyone happens to pin this image, that Alt tag is what Pinterest will automatically fill the Pin description with.

Keep your alt tag to 125 characters or less. This can be a bit more descriptive than the filename but not a full-on description.

If you’re not using WordPress, you can use HTML in your editor of choice, here’s what that would look like:

<img src="IMAGE URL" alt="YOUR ALT TAG HERE" />

And no, it should not be in all caps. I did that just so you can easily see where it goes.

Write Your Title tag

Just like the alt tag, the Title tag is easily overlooked. This is what will show up when someone hovers their mouse over your image and they get that little popover bubble.

Again, WordPress makes this very easy to add, but if you’re using something else or doing this manually through HTML, here’s what it would look like:

<img src="IMAGE URL" alt="YOUR ALT TAG HERE" title="YOUR TITLE TAG HERE" />

Your title tag should also be in title case— first letter of each word Capitalized, just like the title of a blog post. And also, just like a good blog post title, try to keep it to 60 characters or less.

For a more in-depth look at Alt tags and Title tags, Yoast has a fantastic article that I highly recommend.

Conclusion

Getting your content to stand out in today’s dizzying overload of content doesn’t take much. You just need to have a little more insight and be willing to do a little more work than the next guy or gal.

Knowing these simple social media image optimization and workflow tips will help you begin cranking these things out with greater effectiveness and the highest possible efficiency.

As a recap, here’s what you need:

• Pick the image creation tool that works for you
• Decide on the content
• Source the images or primary visual aids
• Put it all together (using your tool of choice)
• Optimize the file name
• Optimize the file size
• Upload the image
• Add alt tag (if applicable)
• Add title tag (if applicable)

Once you’ve done this a handful of times, it will be like second nature. Done consistently over time, this can be a highly impactful strategy for getting your content discovered by a much wider audience.

So which image creation tool is your favorite? Is there anything you read above that was completely new to you? You can leave a comment by clicking here.