When it comes to using free images for your social visuals and other projects, there are many websites that offer free or paid-for images. If you are like me, you have a small budget and can't take great photos. So, these websites become very important. Let's take a look at a few of my favorite sites.

Sometimes I use these photos for social media posts but I also like to do a little photo manipulation to create header images for website. The social post image above was made from a photo from Pixabay. Here is a header image that I created for the MUSED Literary Review website, by combining several elements from a few photos (see screenshot).

These photos are great for experimenting for other projects. For example, you can turn a colorful photo into a beautiful bokeh background for social visuals. Or, turn a photo into a digital stamp for your craft projects. Here is a cute image that I created in Pixelmator from several photos of mushrooms (see screenshot). As these photos come in several sizes, most of them are big enough to use for desktop wallpaper.

You have your choice of sizes to download. The free photos are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license. That means they are free for personal and commercial use with no attribution required. These sites are also starting to offer CC0 licensed videos. You can start by browsing the categories lists or use the site search engine. Once you open a free account, you can follow your favorite photographers and store photos in a list.

Over the past few years, the quality of these photos has increased considerably. If you use sites like Canva to create visuals, you will recognize some of the photos from these websites in their resource list.

Pixabay
https://pixabay.com/
1.2 million images
This site is my go-to site for images. They have a great collection of photographs and their search engine is very good.

Public Domain Pictures
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/
208,298 images
This is my second favorite CC0 site but it has less photographs in their database.

Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/
300,000 images
I've never used this site but have read good reviews.

Pexels
https://www.pexels.com/
40,000 images
I've never used this site but I have read good reviews.

Stocksnap.io
https://stocksnap.io/
I've never used this site but I have read good reviews.

CC0 Licence
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/