Visual elements are important in any content, social media or display marketing strategy, (among many others!). However, it is not always easy to get cheap or free quality images.
But, not to worry. In this “Free tools series” post, you will discover the best free and unlicensed image banks.
The kind of quality images that make your target audience stop in their tracks. The right images with the right copy (in front of the right people) make it almost impossible not to click.
So…
Unless you want to spend a lot of money on attractive images for your marketing strategies, read on to find the best image banks for free!
Pexels
This image bank has very good quality images and videos. The search engine allows you to select collections and trending topics. Additionally, you can filter your search by orientation (horizontal, vertical or square), size, and colour. To download you just have to click on the image or video.
Pixabay
Pixabay is very similar to Pexels but this one offers a more extensive catalogue. In addition to images and videos, there are vectors, illustrations, music and sound effects.
The search engine offers filters by type of content; there is an search option to choose between photos, vectors, illustrations or videos.
Unsplash
Unsplash has very (very) high quality images, which can be filtered by orientation (landscape, portrait, square). You can also search images by author; So if you have previously used images by a specific author, you can later search for this same author and thus find images of a specific style or the same photographic line.
The search engine allows you to select trending searches, trending topics and trending collections.
The bad side to Unsplash is because it is so good – it is very well known and you may find the images you select on more than one website.
Hubspot
Hubspot has its own image bank (totally royalty-free) with professional photos that you can use on your blog or any other digital platform.
They have grouped their images into the following categories:
- Office stock photos
- Computer stock photos
- Kitchen stock photos
- Miscellaneous stock photos (any other photo)
To download the images, you have to fill out a form and then you will see the different folders by category to download.
Wunderstock
At Wunderstock you will find high quality images, but much less variety than the image banks above.
When you enter a word in the search engine, it will give you the possibility to filter by license. You have to select “Public Domain”. The platform also allows you to select the source (Wunderstock or Flickr) and the orientation (landscape, portrait, square).
And in case you cannot find the images you are looking for in any of these image banks (although quite unlikely!), we’ll leave you with some others that are interesting:
Gratisography
New Old Stock
Jay Mantri
Libreshot
Pikwizard
Little Visuals
Negative Space
Have you used any of these image banks? Any others we should check out?
Let us know your thoughts on the image banks and if there’s something you want to know about in our Free Tools Series.
If you need help with your web design, then please get in touch with us.
