6 Amazing Stock Photo Websites for High Quality Images
High quality photos and videos are an extremely important resource and marketing tool for any business. Whether as an eye-catching visual on a website or as an attractive graphic in a brochure, we take in far more information in less time when looking at an image or photo than we do a paragraph of text.
According to Ethos3, we live in a visual world. Content with visuals (photos, illustrations, videos) gets 94% more total views than its non-visual counterparts. And visual content is 40x more likely to be shared on social networks.
As a graphic designer I’ve done a lot of research into the best places to find this visual content and have decided to share my top 6 favourite places to find stock photos.
Free Stock Photo Sites
1. Pexels
Pexels has a wide range of high resolution, high quality photos. The majority of images have beautiful composition and were taken by a range of talented photographers. All images on the site are free and can be used for commercial and non-commercial use without attribution.
2. Pixabay
Pixabay offers a large collection of stock photos, vector images and art illustrations under Creative Commons CC0. The images are available to download in various sizes, but an account is needed to download the highest resolution for images.
3. Unsplash
Unsplash has a huge collection high quality stock images which are free under the Unsplash license. The homepage collection is collated by a dedicated team and often features an assortment of stunning photography.
Subscription Based Stock Photo Sites
1. Shutterstock
Shutterstock is one of the most well known stock photo websites, with over 247 million royalty-free photos, vectors, illustrations, videos and music tracks. A range of pricing options are available with subscriptions for both individuals and companies, as well as prepaid image packs. Prepaid Image packs start from $49AUD for 5 images with monthly plans starting at $29AUD for 10 images.
2. Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock is one of the newer kids on the block, despite this it has a large collection of photos, vectors, illustrations, videos, templates and 3D options. Subscriptions can be purchased as part of an Adobe Creative Cloud Subscription or as a standalone subscription. Pricing starts from $39.59AUD a month for 10 assets. You can also purchase ‘Credit’ packs which can be used to purchase premium images and HD videos.
3. Deposit Photos
Deposit Photos has over 100 million royalty-free stock photos, vector images and videos in a wide range of categories. They offer a range of monthly and yearly subscriptions for both individuals and companies, with pricing starting at $29AUD/month for 30 images with any additional images costing $1 each.
