Ten Best Websites for Thanksgiving Clipart and Stock Photography

Creating holiday accents for your home can be both fun and challenging, but it's made infinitely easier by the amount of Clipart and stock photography available online. Downloading Thanksgiving artwork makes it easier to create stylish, professional looking place cards, invitations, and menus to make your holiday table one that stands out.

The simplest place to start looking for artwork is right in your own computer. Microsoft Word has a generous library of Clipart for every season and every taste, but the selection can sometimes be limited. On most newer versions of Word, the Clipart gallery also gives you the option to search online for your desired graphic. Microsoft's product website offers over 150,000 free downloads of Clipart and graphics to use within the Microsoft Word template and other Microsoft applications. Another quick and easy stop for many free images is Google Images, readily available with a quick Google search for "Thanksgiving clipart". The best part about both sites is that the images are completely free. However, you can access a much wider range of options if you are willing to subscribe to some of the more extensive Clipart libraries that are available online. The Clipart Guide provides a range of free clipart and royalty free photos, but with a subscription to the site, you can have access to a broader range of royalty free photos, as well as some selections that you must pay a nominal fee in order to download. Depending on what you are using your art for, a paid selection may be what you are looking for.

Stock photography is also incredibly easy to find on the internet. One of the top stock photography sites, IStockPhoto, offers a collection of beautiful, full color images of fall leaves, horns of plenty, and many other traditional Thanksgiving representations. Real photography adds another dimension to your holiday creations that can sometimes fall flat when using Clipart. In addition to the royalty free options on IStock, you can also create an account and purchase other stock photography that will make money for the artist who has created and posted the work. If you are someone who is constantly falling prey to the creativity bug, this is sometimes a useful option. Fotosearch also offers quite a bit of royalty free stock photography and graphics, however the quality of the images tends to be lower than that of IStock. Many of the images are somewhat dated in the dress and presentation of the image, and the quality of color also seems to be diminished. The selection however is still quite varied and many of the options still quite useful for quick projects. Two other stock sites that offer a broad variety of material are StockXchng and Alamy Stock, though the selection is fairly limited in comparison to IStock and Fotosearch.

Occasionally a Google search for something as common as Thanksgiving graphics can produce so many results that sifting through them all can be frustrating. One site that proved helpful was 1NetCentral.com's Thanksgiving Graphic Directory. The site offers listings to many non-commercial websites that offer different options for Thanksgiving graphics. It's well organized and gives you a one-stop shop for many different types of graphics without having to search through hundreds of links. Another service that makes multiple listings available in one place is About.com. Not only are there downloadable graphics available on the About page, but links to other graphics as well as sponsored links to other websites offering related services are all neatly listed in one place.

However, one site that seemed to appear frequently in searches was MySpace, as there are services offered to MySpace users that allow them to personal their page, but these sites are loaded with popups and advertisements while offering very little in the way of actual graphics. This is one, out of the ten I reviewed, that users should beware of.

So enjoy getting ready for your holiday celebration with these sites that make available some of the most creative Clipart and stock photography for your seating cards, invitations, and Thanksgiving menus!