The best stocks for designers. The 18 best services with free content The best free photo stocks: various sites to find photos for designers

Where to search for stock images?

There are many stock graphics sites on the internet where you can find free photos, videos or vector illustrations for personal and commercial use.

All photo stocks can be divided into two types:

1. Universal. Such resources publish photos and videos on any topic – from nature, city or food images to stock photos of people. As a rule, such resources are used to prepare presentations, articles, small projects, etc.
2. About the topic. With the help of these photo banks, people search for images on a particular topic, for example, historical paintings, photographs of famous people, etc.

What you need when working with photo stocks Carefully review the terms of use of the images.

If you are using photos, videos or graphics for personal purposes (such as making a presentation to friends, for school or other personal matters), you can safely use any photo. If you plan to use photos for commercial purposes (such as presenting a project for a company, publishing in the media, design project, printing an image in a book), you should not forget about copyright law.

Almost all online stock photo sources are equipped with filters that allow you to select images for legal use. For example, this license allows you to Public DomainSo you can freely use the photo for any purpose you want.

Free photo stocks: 6 best sites

Remove splash

Unsplash is one of the largest libraries of free images. Its main advantages are convenient search by keywords, all photos are grouped into thematic collections and tags. To improve the quality of your search, enter your query in English.

Photos on Unsplash can be used for personal and commercial purposes. It is not required to provide authorship, but the service itself recommends that you do so as a thank you. Photostock also offers a paid subscription that gives access to even more exclusive photos.

The service itself belongs to universal photo banks – there are almost no photos of celebrities, historical images and the like.

Freepik

This service is also considered one of the best free photo stocks with a huge database of images. Here you can not only download the desired image in high resolution, but also edit it as you need. All the content presented on the site can be used when making layouts. You can also find video and audio content on the site, but they are offered in smaller quantities than photos.

A big advantage of the Freepik photo bank is the ability to search for images in Russian.

In addition, Freepik allows you to search for images already created by other authors or generate your own images using a neural network. All you have to do is search for the image you want. However, to save some images and use them for commercial purposes, you will need to purchase a paid subscription.

Stock case

This project helps designers, students, and photographers find high-quality photos. The service currently offers over 140,000 different images that can be downloaded for free.

For searching, it is better to make a query in English, as Stockvault is a foreign, non-Russian service.

Wikimedia Commons

This service is a photo bank of over 100 million free images uploaded to Wikipedia by users. The service will be useful for designers or students looking for reproductions of paintings, historical photographs, photos of celebrities, and much more.

The photo bank is available in Russian, but sometimes it is worth using English for a better search.

If you want to use the image for commercial purposes, please check if there is a license in the photo description. Public DomainYou can also set a filter to show images with the license you need.

Flickr

Many Flickr photo creators let you use their photos for free. You’ll almost always need to credit the image’s author and license type (usually listed in the image’s description).

Since Flickr is a foreign service, it is best to make requests in English.

Life of Pix

The Life of Pix stock photo gallery contains thousands of photos that will help you “spice up” your project or presentation. The images are divided into categories – “Food”, “City”, “Architecture”, “Black and White”, etc. New photos appear in the stock resource every week.

The photo bank interface is in English, so it is better not to use Russian for your request. Free download without registration is also available.

Best Video Stocks for Designers: 3 Free Websites

The supply of free videos for commercial use is smaller than that of photo stocks, but some video stocks provide good quality content for free use without registration.

one. Lid. This video stock allows you to search for short videos according to the specified parameters. You can download videos in MP4 format in high resolution FullHD for free and without registration. If you purchase a subscription, you can save content in better quality and get access to more videos.

2. Video. This service updates a large video library weekly. The resource offers convenient navigation on the site – you can easily find the video you need by going to categories, watch content in the “New” and “Popular” tabs or search for videos on demand. Videos marked with a lightning bolt in the lower left corner are paid, the rest of the videos marked Free can be downloaded for free and without registration.

3. Cute stock images. The main feature of this site is that you can download high-resolution 4K videos without subscribing or registering to the resource. Initially, Videostock offers only free videos. The library consists of more than 5 thousand files in different categories, from nature to lifestyle.

Resources with free vector graphics and icons: 4 useful sites

There are many resources on the internet that offer designers a wealth of graphic images and icons to fill a project with. Stock sites often offer all kinds of icons: outline, flat, color, two-tone.

Some authors on stock graphics sites publish entire sets of certain icons drawn by the same designer in the same style. Such sets simplify and speed up the task of finding the necessary drawings.

Sources where you can download icons for free include:

1. Flat icon
2. Remix icon
3. Fur
4. Freepik

Websites with free mockups: top 5 sites

A mockup is a realistic model of an object that helps show how a design will look in context: on a phone screen, on a T-shirt, or on street billboards and signs.

Mockups are a great way to present your project. If you don’t have time to make one yourself, free sites with a selection will be a good help.

You can find free models that you can use in your project here:

1. Download Model
2. Free model
3. Free mockup
4. More PSDs
5. Freepik