Last updated November 27, 2016

You already know that good photography is essential to your online marketing efforts. It helps liven up our blog posts and social media shares and catches the eye quicker than the most carefully crafted headline. And while you may understand the value of quality images, you're eager to spend money every time you want to publish a blog post or update your company's Facebook page.

It's not uncommon to see novice online marketers using Google Image Search to find "free" photos. Don't make this mistake. Those photos aren't free - most of them are protected by copyright, and using them commercially could result in a cease and desist letter, a hefty invoice, or even land you in court.

We're here to help with a comprehensive list of truly free photo sources that you can use legally without compromising on quality.

Our Favorite Free Photo Sites

This is a huge list, so you may want to bookmark it for later if you need to find a photo in a hurry. To make things easy, we'll start you off with the best free photo sources we've found. Many of these sites offer images under a CC0 license, so they're essentially in the public domain. A few use their own slightly more restrictive licenses, but at the time of this writing, all allow for commercial use without attribution

Unsplash - Photo: Faye Cornish via Unsplash Unsplash has amassed a library of over 80,000 CC0 licensed photos since their launch in 2013, and appears to be one of those rare cases where staggering quantity doesn't mean lackluster quality. It's really hard to believe some of this work is available for free. The search feature is nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. Pixabay - Photo: Karsten Kettermann via Pixabay Over 670,000 photos from multiple sources, with one of the most full featured search engines you'll find on a free photo site (search by orientation, media type, color, or resolution). Also offers free illustrations, vectors, and video. Download multiple sizes, so you don't waste bandwidth on a huge file when you only need a small version. You'll have to create a free account to download, but it's well worth the minimal effort. Pexels - Photo: Pexels.com Over 10,000 free photos, with plans to add 1000+ photos every month. The overall quality is high and you'll find some truly exceptional photos in their catalog. Pexels library is searchable and you can also browse (but not search) by color. Offers instant downloads in multiple sizes. Magdeleine - Photo: Connor McSheffrey via Magdeleine This lovingly curated gallery has some amazing work from a variety of photographers. Some of them require attribution, so be sure to check the terms for each photo, but there's a filtering feature that allows you to limit your search to only the public domain photos if that's what you're after. Gratisography - Photo: Ryan McGuire via Gratisography Public Domain stock photographed by Ryan McGuire, in categories such as Animals, Nature, Objects, People, Urban, and Whimsical. There's some really fun and offbeat stuff here, well worth a visit if you're looking for something unusual. The archive is searchable, with one-click downloads and no account required. FindA.Photo - Photo: Bolun Yan via Finda.Photo Searchable archive of 10,000+ photos from various sources (including others on this list). You can also browse by color look through curated collections of related images. High quality photos and easy downloads make this a great place to look when you need photos in a hurry. Negative Space - Photo: via Negative Space Hundreds of searchable images with more being added every week. You can also search photos by color and copy space, which is rare on small free sites. Negative Space is especially useful if you're looking for photos with space for copy or to use as backgrounds. Popular categories include Technology, Work, Abstract, and Architecture. Skitterphoto - Photo: via Skitterphoto This excellent collection comes to us via a group of photographers from The Netherlands. It features nearly a thousand searchable, high-quality photos, dedicated to the public domain, in categories that include Flora, Fauna, HDR, and Urban. It's unique and high quality work and we hope the collection will continue to grow. Library of Congress: Prints & Photographs Online Catalog - Photo: Dorothea Lange for the FSA How about some public domain photos from famous photographers like Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange? The Library of Congress has an extensive library of historical images, and because they were works for hire made for the US government, they are not eleigible for copyright protections and thus in the public domain. Highlights include Ansel Adam's photos documenting the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar during WWII and Dorothea Lange's famous shots of migrant farm workers for the FSA. Highly recommended for history buffs and photography fans alike.

Other Free and Public Domain Photos

While these sites didn't make it into our favorites, all contain photos that can be used freely in commercial projects, with no attribution required. Like our favorites, many of these use CC0 or Public Domain licensing.

Sites with more restrictive licenses

The following sites tend to have more restrictive licenses, most requiring that you credit the site and/or photographer in order to use their photos. You'll have to read the terms carefully so you understand your responsibilities, but we're including these archives because they contain photos of especially high quality or offer images and features you won't find elsewhere.

Foter - Foter searches through millions of CC-licensed images, with the ability to filter by license (commercial or personal use) and color. The images library seems more focused on quantity than quality, but what makes them unique if there Wordpress plugin, which allows you to search and add images without leaving Wordpress, even automatically adding the attribution that many of the photos require. Morguefile - Browse or search thousands of quality photos uploaded "for creatives, by creatives." Morguefile does have some unusual licensing terms, requiring that photos be modified in some way before you use them, so be careful to read the terms before use. But if you don't mind doing a little photo editing, there's some great material here. Tookapic - Featuring over 100,000 photos by thousands of photographers, Tookapic has built an huge library of images. As is often the case with quantity, the quality of the work varies (a lot!), but there's a lot to choose from. All photos require attribution and a link back to the site. WOCinTech - While women of color tend to be sadly underrepresented in stock photos, the WOCinTech group aims to changed that with this release of 500+ images portraying women of all ethnicities working with technology. Attribution is required. IM Free - Curated design resources (mostly photos, but also icons and templates) from a variety of sources. Thousands of photos, concentrated around cityscapes, nature, and people, all free to use with attribution. Superfamous - A collection of photos by Folkert Gorter, with many abstract and closeup shots that could make great background images. Attribution required. Raumrot - Over one thousand photos from Markus Spiske. Quality work, sorted into "sets" which seem a little random, but there's good stuff here if you sort through it. Attribution required. Albumarium - Many good quality images organized into galleries. You can search for Galleries but not individual photos. Galleries can be filtered to show only images that can be used commercially. Attribution is required. Wikimedia Commons - A sister project of Wikipedia, Wikimedia has a huge archive of Creative Commons and Public Domain licensed images. Be sure to check the license on any files you want to use - not all photos are available for commercial use and many require attribution. Death to Stock - Photo: Death to Stock Not a traditional stock photo site (as you should expect from the name). After entering your email address, Death to Stock will send you free stock photos every month. The images tend to be very high quality from professional photographers. Every Stock Photo - A stock photo search engine that searches 30 million photos from a variety of CC licensed sources. By default it's search results include photos that require attribution and can't be used commercially, but there's a filter that allows you to limit your search to Public Domain photos. Image Finder - Image Finder is another aggregated search engine that searches a variety of free photo sites. There is currently no way to limit your search to Public Domain images, and the search results also include paid images from Shutterstock, so you have to be make sure you read the license for each photo - they're not all free, but many are. StockPhotos.io - A Pinterest style site that curates the best photos from a variety of sources. Some of them require attribution, but they only permit images that have been licensed for commercial use, so it's still a good source of images for business web sites.creative Creative Commons Search - This search page, from the creators of the Creative Commons licenses, makes it easy to find CC licensed images through a number of sources, including Google Image Search. Many require attribution, though, so be sure to read the license for each image before using.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below if we've overlooked your favorite source for free stock photos, or share your own experience with any of these sites.