Moreover, the web is populated with handy search tools such as TinEye which the original owner of the images can use to spot copyright violations. Being caught stealing photos instead of creating original ones is embarrassing, but may also be costly in some instances.
Fortunately, there are plenty of options that bloggers on a budget can use to acquire and use photos legally without breaking the bank or copyright laws.
Below are 10 online photo libraries that are packed with free excellent images that can be used by anyone, even commercially, at no cost at all.
1. Flickr
This is the world's largest and most popular image sharing website. Flickr hosts millions of images and users are continuously posting new ones daily. You can use any of the images uploaded to Flickr, as long as you create a link back to the original picture. WordPress users can use a plugin called PhotoDropper that can search and inset photos for you on your own blog and automatically lace the required attribution link.2. Stock.XCHNG
This is a fabulous library with over 500, 000 images on virtually every topic and should probably be the first place for you to look when searching for free photos and images. The image licensing agreement on Stock.XCHNG may be a little complicated, so you have to read carefully before using the images.
3. FreeRange
This is a site that certainly lives up to its name; it offers a free range of photos to anyone, anywhere. It is a stock photo site containing thousands of high quality royalty-free photos that you can put to both commercial and non-commercial use. What's more, most photos posted on the site are in high resolution, which makes them ideal for both print work and online use.
4. DeviantArt Stock Images
Like Flickr, DeviantArt has a section for stock images that you can download and use. DeviantArt has a thriving artistic community so you can be sure to find thousands of high quality, creative and unique images to spruce up your site and convey a clear message to uses.
You have to be careful when using images from DeviantArt though as contributors are allowed to have their own terms and conditions. You therefore have to read these carefully, especially if you intend to put the images to commercial use.
5. Free pixels
This can't be considered a large site by any means, but you will love the quality of the free images available for your use.
6. Every Sock Photo
This site does not host any photos, rather, it is an image search site that sources free images from multiple sources and presents them in your search result when you key in certain keywords.
7. Stockvault.net
This site offers a small collection of premium quality photos, clip arts, logo template, backgrounds and textures for free. It is the perfect site to use when looking to improve you site's visuals using awesome graphics. But beware though; Images posted on Stockvault are only free for personal, non-commercial use.
8. Morgue File
This website is touted as a place for "public images for creative people for creative humans." And the tag line certainly doesn't oversell or disappoint. The site has some incredibly gorgeous photos, most of them being natured themed. Morgue File's Best feature is considered to be the excellent search tool that lets you find images by keywords, categories, rating, color and even size. This makes it easy to bypass irrelevant images and zoom into those you need.
9. Free Photos Bank
This site offers the typical range of free images- landscapes, animal, people etc. It is however, best suited for getting free abstract photos, digital work and backgrounds. You do not have to register and the photos are easy to download in your preferred resolution.
10. Ancestry images
This website is filled with uploaded images prints and maps waiting for you to discover. If you post content with a historical base on your site, then you may want to brows some of these maps to add a sense of authenticity to your post. Describing a country in the 1700s may be great but readers will appreciate it more, if you used a map to show them how it looked like.
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