As a small business owner, you may find yourself at a loss when needing photos for brochure or poster printing. You can do a search online for free stock photos, but the only problem is that many of the sites that come up in such a search do not really offer their photos for free if used for corporate or commercial materials. Below are a few of the best sites for free stock photos, along with a brief explanation of the terms of use each site puts forth.
Really, Really Free
Public-Domain-Photos.com
With 5,000 free photos and 8,000 free cliparts advertised on their front page for personal or commercial use, Public-Domain-Photos.com is one of the safest places to look for free stock photos. In fact, all photos are marked as public domain, meaning that the artist relinquished all rights to the photo or clipart. Can it get anymore free than this?
Image*After
Another website that openly claims that all photos (and textures!) are for personal or commercial use is Image*After. All photos are high resolution and range in size from 1600×1200 to 2560×1920. According to their terms of use, the only thing that you can not do with their photos is to use them in direct competition with them. Other than that, it’s free game for the taking. Now this is what I call free.
MorgueFile
Providing top quality stock photos for public and commercial use, MorgueFile allows you to download images for free without a registration. Their license comes in “human code” making it easy to see that once you alter a photo, you can pretty much do anything you want to with it. Before downloading, make sure to check the image size in the info link for each image to make sure it will work for your purpose.
Photl.com
Check out the legal information for Photl.com and you will find that basically any public use of their photos are allowed, with reasonable exceptions such as for slander and for sale. Plus all stock photos are sized at least 4368×2912, and with no registration required you can download up to 35 mb of photos a day. Search by keyword and color!
Free with Lots of Conditions
Stock.xchng
One of the largest websites with stock photos, both free and at a price, Stock.xchng allows companies to use photos without a watermark (free photos) in any corporate materials or advertisements, with some exceptions. The contributor of the photo usually asks to be contacted before public use, and photos are forbidden for pornographic and other similar unlawful uses or on art intended to be sold for profit. You can check out their image license, located underneath any photo you view. Plus, no account required for downloading free photos! To browse through photos, you have two options: (1) search through their image by category or (2) search by keywords, such as “happy family.”
Photoxpress.com
Photoxpress.com adds thousands of new stock photos daily to their site, all free for use when brochure or poster printing, on business cards, websites, and any other corporate and advertising materials. The only exceptions include photos for use as logos and reselling photos for profit. Check out their license for a complete list of terms. You do have to register in order to download, in which you are allowed one free photo a day. The allowable download amount bumps up to 10 a day if you become a fan on Facebook and add your contact information.
Freerange
Once again, this website requires registration for free downloads, but all photos are at least 2400×1600 pixels. And you may want to review the license since some uses of stock photos on Freerange require citation, such as for use on book covers and websites. In general, though, once you have completed registration, all photos can be used for advertising or corporate literature purposes as long as they are not sold for a profit.
Dreamstime
With both free and priced stock photos, Dreamstime offers a large database for commercial use. When needing free photos for brochure or poster printing or any other advertisement, you will need to choose from their list of free or unwatermarked items. It is unclear in their terms of use if free photos can be used for corporate image materials or not, so contacting the site for permission may be necessary. And you will need to register in order to download any stock photos, free or not.
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