Today, there are several great Internet websites that offer thousands of free public domain and royalty free images. Below is a list of some available sites to find these pictures.

Free Images

FREEIMAGES - Free Images is one of the best sites to locate free stock photos. The site is one of the best sites to locate free stock photos and contains thousands of free images that can be used by virtually anyone. While many of the pictures are free, some images do require written permission first.

All these sites have free images with different agreements. Make sure the images you’re copying have no restrictions or have license agreements that allow you to use them how you choose.

This page tells users where they can find pictures to download. To learn how to copy them, see: How to copy text and images from a web page.

Google Images with usage rights

Google Images - Searching on Google Images search is a great way to find many interesting pictures, but it used to be very time consuming to find pictures you could legally use on your site. Thankfully, Google now has an option to search images by usage rights. In the image below, under the Search tools (1.) and then Usage Rights (2.), you can filter your search based on how it’s going to be used.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons - Fantastic media repository that is part of the Wikipedia umbrella project, where users are free to use any of the site’s photos, audio, videos, and other media freely.

Flickr: The Commons

Flickr: The Commons - Flickr: The Commons is a section of Flickr containing pictures with no copyrights from The Library Of Congress, museums, Smithsonian Institution, and Flickr users.

Flickr British Library - A fantastic collection of scans from the British Library of over 11,000,000 public domain pictures.

MorgueFile

MorgueFile - Another fantastic site to locate high-resolution digital stock photography. The site offers thousands of free images, almost all which have no restrictions or agreements attached. Also, the site does not require a login to download the high-quality files.

StockSnap.io

StockSnap.io - A great collection of thousands of high-resolution images that are free from Copyright restrictions.

Unsplash

Unsplash - Fantastic site with over 550,000 high-resolution photos that can be used by anyone from a community of generous photographers.

Picjumbo

Picjumbo - A great collection of totally free photos for commercial and personal use in a wide variety of categories.

StockVault

StockVault - Another great site containing thousands of free stock photography in a large variety of categories.

Picdrome

Picdrome - A great site that lists several hundred photos in about a dozen albums.

PD Photo

PD Photo - Another great collection of thousands of free public domain pictures. This site contains one of the best collections of travel pictures from around the world.

Pixabay

Pixabay - Simple, easy to use site with nearly 65,000 photos and illustrations. All the pictures may be used freely for any purpose, without attribution.

Pexels

Pexels - Great site of photos and videos that are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license.

Burst

Burst - A great selection of free high-resolution pictures for websites and commercial use from Shopify.

Liam’s pictures from old books

From Old Books - A good collection of original pictures from old books that are no longer copyrighted and considered public domain. Liam’s pictures from old books is a great place to find obscure and unique pictures and illustration.

WorldImages

WorldImages - California State University site containing over 60,000 images from around the world that can be used freely for non-profit and educational use.

GoodFreePhotos

GoodFreePhotos - Site run by Yinan Chen that specializes in photos of state parks, national parks, national landmarks, and historical sites.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt - Another fantastic site with not only photographs, but traditional art, digital art, stock images, and more. Keep in mind that this site contains both royalty free and copyrighted works. Make sure you view the artists’ or photographers’ usage guidelines and rules before using any image.

Other

The above list is only a few of our favorite sites that we have found to be useful for locating free public domain images. If the above links do not have the images you’re looking for, there are hundreds of other available services online.

  • Open a search for hundreds of other image services.
  • How to copy text and images from a web page.
  • Where to post my pictures, movies, or other files online for free.
  • What program can I use to view, edit, or create images?
  • Image help and support.