Top 10 Free Image Sites for Online Use

Bloggers and free-lance writers seem to always be sorting through images trying to find an appropriate, but legal and free image to insert. Some sites say copy-right free, but they are not royalty-free. Some require complicated attribution with codes to be pasted. Some are not offered for use on anything but a personal project. While researching this article, I found some that are only offered for use in an educational setting.

Here is a list that is nowhere near exhaustive, and frankly, I would love to receive some comments to this post with wonderful graphic sites that are available for public use. I have only included sites with no strings attached.

1. Morgue File
This one is first because I have derived so much benefit from them in my article writing. This site is just what it suggests. These photos are ones that would have been deleted, and the photographers dumped their collections there. There is absolutely no catch. LOVE this site.

2. Photo Rack - Stock Photos
This is an awesome site and is the best one I found tonight. I intend to do some real exploring here.

3. FreePixels.com
I like this site. They make a very plain statement that you can use the images in personal or commercial endeavors. You can't, of course, sell the images as images. The images I saw and searched for were mainly photos. The quality is great, but the annoying talking advertisement at the top of the page makes you want to scream.

4. Free Royalty Free Stock Photography - Home

This site is not a large inventory site, but it is very good quality. Look at this fruit photograph to the left. The site makes a major point of saying that not only are the photographs free, but they are royalty-free, as well. Very important.

5. Unprofound
This is a really neat site divided by colors. This is quite convenient for blogger using a certain color scheme. I like this site, too.

6. Image After

This site is an unusually laid-out site. They do have an extensive library of well-categorized pictures. I happen to see they had a nice food section. It is difficult to find particular foods you are looking for for recipes that are free images.

7. Open Photo
This site has special little links where you check the Creative Commons License on the picture. It does ask for attribution. If you needed a particular shot, this one has some unusual photos.

8. Imagebase
This is an interesting site. Here is a direct quote about the terms of usage.

"What does "free to use" actually mean? It means you can use the images for whatever you want, personal, commercial or non-profit use for free."
An interesting part of this site are the photos from the Holy Land. I enjoyed perusing them. Here is a photo from the tomb of David.

9. From Old Books
This is a very unique offering. This site has images scanned from very old books. People even donate old books to be scanned because it is just a small-scale site. However, I can't wait to explore this further.

10. Master Media
I am giving you this link last because it is one that you will spend hours enjoying. This site is where I found these sites I have listed. This is a very long listing of imagery sites, and many of them are not what I was looking for. However, you will find options you didn't know existed. It may be a great help when looking for that one particular image you need for an article or blog. I see this is Part 2, so you might want to explore Part 1, also. I surely am.