How to Find Free Stock Images
How Important are Images on My Website?
This is a question we’re often asked by our clients. And the answer is always the same – Hugely important!
Why we hear you ask. Firstly, images help you engage with your audience. As we’re visual beings who connect images to emotions. Images capture our attention and draw us in. Secondly, they also allow us to create a better website design with structure. Breaking up long paragraphs of text into smaller sections that are more user friendly. While making the key points to stand out when users are skim reading. They also carry value when creating SEO friendly websites. As well as providing content that can be shared by your users on social platforms.
For us it’s not necessarily the number of images, but more the quality. Clear, bright, high resolution images make your website stand head and shoulders above a mediocre one. Giving a more professional feel to your brand. While we do offer website photography services to clients local to us in and around Edinburgh. We recognise initially it might not be affordable for your business. Therefore, locating really good quality stock images can be a great alternative.
What do You Mean by High-Resolution?
You might hear us use this term a lot when it comes to image quality. Simply put, this refers to the pixels that make up your image. High res images have more pixels than low res meaning they store much more information. this results in sharper clearer image quality when your images are uploaded to your website. Whereas low res images are much fuzzier and pixelated and often appear much darker.
We kindly ask that the smallest size of image you provide us with when designing your website is 1920px. This will allow us to spend much less time editing low res image trying to make them work. And much more time developing your website. As a result keeping the costs down for you in the long run. It’s a win win for both of us.
Most stock photo websites supply images on download at a scale of 5472px. While others give you the option to choose a specific download size. If this option is there, always choose the largest file size and we can re-size for you from there. As an image should always be re-sized and uploaded for the specific size of the space it needs to fit on website.
Where Can I Find Great Images for Free?
There are many websites out there that stock a vast catalogue of free, high resolution stock images. With generous photographers donating their work to stock photo websites and allowing anyone to download them for free.
Below we’ve recommended our top picks. These websites tend to be our first port of call. Particularly when looking for great image content for clients who don’t have the budget for photography. Or are struggling to supply image content for there web pages.
“Won’t every website have the same images”, we hear you cry? Well, no. As the majority of the sites we’ve outlined below update their catalogue on a daily basis. While not every business is in the same industry, therefore they aren’t always looking for the same kind of photos. For example a lawyer will be looking for very different imagery than a fashion designer. You get the picture (no pun intended).
Librestock
This is often the one we go to first as it holds a large data base of images and links to many of the other websites we’ve outlined below.
Unsplash
Really great quality images. Think lifestyle blog. Often they have been edited to a high standard creating a really high quality result.
Kaboompics
Think lifestyle images, interiors, foodie pics and travel inspired images. Another one of our faves.
Professional Images for Your Website
There are a whole range of websites out there supplying professional stock images without it costing you a penny. You just need to invest a little bit of time into locating the images that you identify with most to suit your brand. There are a whole host of free tools online at your fingertips, including free online image editing tools that you can learn more about in a separate post.
You now know the benefits of using images within your web pages and the importance of using high resolution images to give a more professional feel. Alternatively we do offer a website photography service which we’d be happy to discuss with you as an alternative option.
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