It’s no secret that graphic and UI designers have many time-consuming responsibilities when ideating, building, and testing digital products.
As you can imagine, many designers struggle to allocate time and money to high-quality photography. That’s why stock photo sites are so valuable. Designers have a range of readily available, affordable images at their fingertips.
In today’s guide, we’ll help you find the best photo stock sites to enhance the visual aspects of your designs.
What Are Stock Photos?
Simply put, stock photos are images that are available for anybody to license for commercial purposes. What’s more, there are many stock images that you can use without paying fees.
In the world of UI design, the use of stock images is quite a polarizing matter. Some designers think that stock photos can damage a brand’s authenticity and decrease user engagement.
On the other hand, some designers swear by stock photography for more reasons than you might think.
Why Designers Benefit From Stock Photo Sites
When UI/graphic designers leverage the best photo stock sites, they reap many benefits, including the following:
- Using stock photos can be a significantly cheaper alternative to hiring a professional photographer.
- You have thousands of options across dozens of sites, meaning you can find the right image in a time-efficient manner.
- With a wealth of image options comes a wealth of variety, so you won’t struggle to find suitable photography.
- The majority of stock photos are high-quality and scalable.
- Even if you don’t want to use stock photos in your products, perusing stock sites can spark your creativity.
- Many stock sites have user-friendly UIs, streamlining your task even further.
- Using photos will give your website or article 94% more views, according to a My Marketing stats report.
The 5 Best Free Stock Photo Sites
Now, let’s get down to business; let’s explore the best free stock photo sites.
1. Pexels
Pexels hosts an abundance of free, high-quality stock photos and videos that come from professional photographers all over the world.
What’s great about Pexels is that you can easily peruse a wide selection of categories, including food, people, and colors.
Pexels also incentivizes photographers to commit their images to the site with fun, frequent challenges. This means that you’ll always have a steady influx of exceptional, visually intriguing images and video content.
Best of all, important details accompany Pexels’ images, including the image’s dimensions and aspect ratios.
Ultimately, Pexels is a great site that allows designers to use and modify images at zero cost.
2. Unsplash
If you want consistently stunning visuals from extremely talented and diverse photographers, Unsplash is definitely for you.
Although Unsplash’s illustrations require a premium membership, you won’t lack a wide range of high-quality images.
At the top of Unsplash’s site, you’ll see dozens of inspiring categories, including textures and patterns, nature, and street photography. In other words, you have all the inspiration you could ever need to create unique user interfaces.
Best of all, Unsplash’s designers evidently value responsive design with their iOS app. So, if you’re on the go and have to use your iPhone to find great photography, Unsplash will accommodate you.
3. Pixabay
Pixabay can cater to practically any niche with its extensive offerings. With Pixabay, you don’t just have access to images and videos. You can also leverage free illustrations, music, sound effects, vector art, and GIFs.
Although Pixabay doesn’t have the same high-quality consistency as Unsplash, its library of over four million visuals compensates for that.
Additionally, among Pixabay’s many categories, you have the option to peruse the Editor’s Choice selection.
This category can help you if you’re struggling to find the right images. You can trust that these images display skillful compositions and eye-catching colors!
4. Flickr
Flickr has tens of billions of images, making it one of the largest free stock photo sites on the web.
Flickr has simple search functionalities that can lead you to the best images from both professional and amateur photographers.
When perusing the images that match your keyword, you can also adjust filters that allow for more accurate searches. For example, you can add color, pattern, and depth of field filters. You can even choose the layout of the images before you for better scannability.
What sets Flickr apart from similar sites is that it prioritizes the exposure of great artists. You can join groups that match your keywords, helping you discover and connect with photographers who inspire you.
If that wasn’t enough to sell you on Flickr, it also has a World Map feature for location-specific photos.
5. Rawpixel
Rawpixel has the high-quality photography of Unsplash and the various resource categories of Pixabay. So, what makes Rawpixel unique?
Think aesthetic patterns, intriguing overlays, vibrant gradients, eye-catching illustrations, and even trendy fonts – Rawpixel has it all.
With Rawpixel, you can even organize your search results by seeing what’s new, popular, or “curated.” The curated category adds a useful, personal layer to your user experience with Rawpixel.
To accompany these categories, you also have access to a variety of filters that relate to themes, styles, and more. You can even choose to disregard or solely focus on AI-generated images, demonstrating Rawpixel’s understanding of modern visual trends.
The Best Paid Stock Photo Sites: Our Top 5 Options
Of course, when looking for the best site for stock photos, you need to consider some pricier alternatives, too. Below, we’ve explored these alternatives.
1. Shutterstock
Shutterstock is a world-leading creative platform with a growing community that comprises over two million contributors.
Foremostly, you can rely on Shutterstock for fresh content, especially since it welcomes hundreds of thousands of images every week.
As a leading authority on stock visuals, Shutterstock has exactly what you’d expect. High-quality photography, stunning videos, engaging music, helpful templates, and even AI-generated images.
With helpful dropdown menus, you can streamline your searches and sift through a mass of content intuitively. In addition to this, if you’re struggling for inspiration, Shutterstock lists what’s trending directly below the search bar.
Shutterstock’s pricing models also reflect the unique needs of different user types. Specifically, you can purchase packs for one-time projects or subscribe for long-term use, starting at $29 for ten images.
2. Getty Images
Another giant in the world of stock and editorial photography, Getty Images is perfect for creatives.
Expectedly, with Getty Images, you can look into a number of categories and trends, including animals and AI. You can explore these trends and categories across multiple formats, like illustrations, videos, music, and, of course, photos.
To help you experiment, Getty Images also provides an Insights category that contains comprehensive blogs that explore top visual trends.
The most notable feature of Getty Images is its partner and media collections. Getty Images partners with reputable brands like Disney and ITN, providing you with exclusive content.
With as many offerings as Getty Images has, you can imagine they come with hefty costs. Getty Images’ pricing model is relatively flexible, but in spite of this, it can still prove a pricy resource. For instance, a pack of five small photos could cost you $800.
3. Adobe Stock
If your projects require a lot of creative resources, such as premium photography, videos, and vectors, turn to Adobe Stock.
You won’t struggle to find what you’re looking for in Adobe Stock. Not only can you peruse popular trends, but you also have curated collections that showcase the talent of world-class artists.
With unique 3D assets, AI-generated images, and dozens of plugins, Adobe Stock is perfect for streamlined workflows and improved productivity.
To match the flexibility of its offerings, Adobe Stock also offers a generous range of pricing plans and credit packs. Starting from $29.99 for 10 standard assets a month, you can mix and match your premium assets.
What’s more, if you’re on the fence about Adobe Stock, don’t worry. You can commit to a 30-day free trial that you can cancel without hassle or risk before the trial ends.
4. Bigstock
Like the other sites we’ve discussed today, Bigstock offers more than just professional photography and sizeable libraries.
With Bigstock, you can find vectors, illustrations, and some of the most stunning videos out there.
But what we like about Bigstock, in particular, is its dedication to helping you find the right visual content. After typing in your keyword for an image search, you’ll find a series of dropdown menus below the search bar.
These dropdown options relate to the image’s orientation, category, and artist. You’ll notice other options that relate to people’s photography specifically, like gender, ethnicity, age, and the number of people present.
It’s these dropdown menus that make Bigstock great for designers who want to celebrate authenticity by showcasing real people.
Bigstock’s pricing plans may not offer as much variety as those of other sites, but they are more affordable. For example, you can purchase 150 images a month for as little as $79.
The titles at the top of each plan are a nice little addition. Bigstock will let you know which plans are most popular and flexible and which are the best value.
5. Envato
Last but not least, you can also use Envato, which has millions of creative assets and tools.
To complement Envato’s double-take-worthy photography, you also have everything you need to create superior graphic designs. From patterns to icons and textures to templates, Envato is the tool you need to draw your users’ attention.
In fact, Envato is so comprehensive that you can use its templates to create merchandise and logo designs. You can even create business card mockups!
Additionally, Envato has templates to support you when creating presentations for your stakeholders and clients.
Ultimately, with the range of plugins and tools Envato offers, you can achieve a look that speaks to professionalism.
Like Bigstock, Envato’s pricing plans lack variety, but the unlimited downloads definitely compensate for that. For as little as $15.99 a month, you can enjoy over 19 million premium assets and templates. As an added bonus, you can also leverage lifetime access to a commercial license.
FAQ
What are the best free stock photo sites?
The best free stock photo sites are Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, Flickr, and Rawpixel. We specifically recommend using Unsplash for consistent, high-quality photography and Pixabay for its range of creative resources.
What is the best stock photo site for contributors?
Many contributors consider 500px to be the best stock photo site in terms of earnings. To start with, it’s free to submit your photography to 500px.
What’s more, if you license the image exclusively with 500px, you can earn up to 60% of your photo’s royalties. For non-exclusive photos, you get a 30% commission.
Which is better, iStock or Shutterstock?
Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer to this question, but we’d say that Shutterstock is the superior choice. Shutterstock has more to offer in terms of resources and content.
What’s more, iStock has a TrustPilot rating of 1.1, with many users criticizing iStock’s unprofessionalism and misleading free trials.
Best Photo Stock Sites: Enhance Your Page With High-Quality Images
We hope that, after reading our guide, you will find the best sites for stock photos that meet your needs.
As valuable as high-quality imagery is, it’s not the only thing you should focus on when creating your digital products. You should also keep your users’ navigation fresh in your mind at all times.
This can be tricky if you struggle to map crucial flows, or at least it was before Page Flows.
Page Flows is where you’ll find the user flow inspiration you’ll value throughout your design career. We offer an abundance of screenshots and recordings that we source from big-name brands and popular industries like transport.
But what’s more impressive about our offerings is the diverse range of user flows you’ll have to inspire your designs. We cover crucial flows, from onboarding and upgrading accounts to calling and commenting.
Like the best photo stock sites, we’re here to help you create the most engaging digital products.
Give Page Flows a try if you want to learn how proficient designers create exceptional user flows!
