Where to find images for your website

Design Support Tutorials

Images, photography, pictures. Whatever you want to call it — these are a big part of most designs/websites and are very often overlooked. This is also one of the most common questions we get asked — where do I find images?

It would not be fair if we didn’t share some of the resources for both free and paid images, some of which we frequently use ourselves. Images do get old and overused, so unless you are taking your own professional photos — whatever you buy or find online will most likely be used by someone else.

Free

Paid (low priced)

Paid (higher priced)

professional photoshoot (this is always the #1 choice)
www.gettyimages.com.au
numerous industry-specific websites

There are numerous other websites for stock photography, we just listed some of the ones we’ve either personally dealt with or were recommended.

Whether you are building a website, creating a marketing brochure or even making a Facebook post for your business page, images should be taken seriously and dealt with carefully. It’s also something that may help you sell your product, could turn visitors off your website or even get you into some legal trouble. We’ll briefly cover some of these scenarios below.

Images that don’t do you any favours.

You may not have the time or “creativity” to find the best images for your project. So, instead, you just settle for whatever you had on your hard-drive or quickly found online. These can be images of low quality, very overused that you’ve seen on multiple websites or the strange type, that only you would find appealing.

Weird images. Although we personally love the work on Gratis photography 🙂

Poor quality images. Watch out for low resolution, pixelated or overexposed images.

Overused images. Full disclosure, we ourselves used this photo (circa 2008)

Images that can get you in trouble.

Please, whatever you do, don’t just “google” images and use whatever you find. There are a number of reasons for that, but first is first — they are probably copyrighted and you are not allowed to use them. The other reason is those are often poor quality (although you can find High Res images on Google too) and of course they might be overused and very unoriginal. That aside — the copyrights issue is something you should really think about. We’ve given you resources for both free and cheap images, you have no excuse — why risk it?

However, Google Images do have some options that you may be able to take advantage of. Keeping in mind, they keep changing these around, their search algorithms now offers a vague filter for images that can be used wherever, as in “labeled for reuse”.

Images that help you get noticed.

Depending on what is the aim of your project, whether it’s a website or a printed flyer, images can and do make a big difference to the final result. Good quality photography can help you. Spend a little more time researching, spend a little money (not always required) or, as mentioned earlier — take your own photos.

Stuck? Too much choice or nothing that suits your business? If you are still having trouble finding the right photos — get a designer to draw/design a custom image for you. Make it unique, something that no one else has and fits perfectly with your brand image.

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