19.) iStock
iStock releases new a new batch of free stock images every week. (Signup for a free membership—a slightly confusing process—is required.)
20.) Little Visuals
Little Visuals delivers 7 high-res images to use anyway you want via email every 7 days. Subjects range from industrial parts to idyllic landscapes.
21.) New Old Stock
New Old Stock is a collection of vintage photos from the public archives, free of known copyright restrictions.
22.) PicJumbo
PicJumbo offers a variety of free photos for any kind of use—free of charge with no registration required. Although there’s no search function, categories will help you find your way.
23.) Pickupimage
Pickupimage is a large collection of free stock images mostly focusing on nature- and outdoor-related scenes that can be copied, modified an distributed—even for commercial purposes. No registration necessary! Since the pool isn’t too broad this site didn’t pass the “coffee” search, but here’s a sample of what you can find there.
24.) Superfamous
Superfamous houses the work of Dutch interaction designer Folkert Gorter, whose photography is available under the conditions of a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. This means that you can use the work for your own purposes — including commercial use — as long as credit is provided.
25.) Unsplash
Unsplash offers 10 free (do whatever you want) high-resolution photos every 10 days.
26.) Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a database of 21,049,775 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. The images are painstakingly organized but the classifications may not be super clear if you’re not a big Wikipedia user (I’m not).
Photo search tools
These sites don’t offer free photos themselves but rather provide a way to search easily through Flickr or public domain photos to more quickly find a photo you can use.
27.) Can We Image
Can We Image searches and displays results from Wikimedia Commons. All search results link directly to the resource’s usage rights page.
28.) Compfight
Compfight is a Flickr image search engine that uses the Flickr API to locate images based on your license needs.
29.) Creative Commons Search
Creative Commons Search is a sort of photo search engine clearinghouse that offers access to search services provided by other organizations like Flickr and Google.
For example, searching for “kittens” on Creative Commons Search and selecting Google Images brings me here. Note that the search has been set up with special parameters.
30.) Foter
Foter is a Flickr-focused search tool that helps quickly unearth photos and identify their licenses.
31.) Google Advanced Image Search
Google Advanced Image Search is a method of finding free-to-use images through Google’s own search tools. Here’s a quick guide.
32.) Every Stock Photo
Every Stock Photo is a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo’s license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos.
33.) Image Finder
Image Finder allows users to search Creative Commons photos from Flickr with similar filters for commercial/non-commercial and other categories.
34.) PhotoPin
PhotoPin‘s interface allows users to search millions of Creative Commons photos from Flickr.
35.) StockPhotos.io
StockPhotos.io is a Creative Commons-licensed professional free stock photos sharing community of about 25,000 images. All photos displayed on this Pinterest-esque site are allowed for commercial use with proper credits to the authors.
36.) TinEye
TinEye is a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version.
37.) Wylio
Wylio is an all-in-one picture finder, re-sizer and attribution builder for bloggers. Users can resize up to 5 free images per month.
Create-your-own image tools
For options beyond readymade images, consider the many tools available to help even the design-challenged among us create attractive, original images.
37.) Canva
is one we particularly turn to often for creating new images to accompany Buffer’s blog posts. This tool allows users to search for the best graphics, photos, and fonts (or upload your own) then use Canva’s drag-and-drop tool to create a new design.
38.-51.)
For plenty more options for making original art, quote images and even infographics, check out Buffer’s 14 Great Tools to Create Engaging Infographics and Images for your Social Media Posts.
Embeddable media
52.) Getty Images
made big news recently when it began to allow non-commercial sites to embed some of its photos for free.
Downloading an image and uploading it to your website is still a no-no—you’ve got to embed it.
As you’ll see below, an embed is slightly more intrusive than simply adding a photo into your post – the embed keeps its own frame, share buttons and branding. Still, for many blogs it’s an option worth looking into.
Search for embeddable photos here. Read the instructions and then click on the “Search images available to embed” link.
53.+)
It’s also worth noting that you can embed Twitter, Facebook or Google+ posts,YouTube videos and even Slideshare decks into your blog post.
Pinterest boards are a little trickier to embed, but it can be done. Here’s a full guide from Ginny Soskey and a look at her adorable example board.
Often, viewers can engage with embedded posts more deeply than static content by following users, liking or commenting on posts
Consider replacing screenshots with embedded posts so that users can engage with your examples.
What free photo sites did I miss? What tools do you like the most to find or create images? I’d love to keep the list growing in the comments!
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Top image courtesy TimothyKrause
