Top 12 Tool Tips to Find and Create Images for Your Blog

Finding the right images to accompany a blog post can be a painstaking effort. Hiring a photographer or designer or purchasing pictures from a library are options for some, but it's too expensive a strategy for most SME businesses out there. We've got the solution right here!

At Userlike we are always looking for cool pictures to use in our posts, and we thought we'd share our favourite resources with you. There are two ways to get them high-quality images: You find them or you create them.

Let's first consider resources for finished images. Whether you are looking for professional stock footage or user free-rights shared pictures the following platforms will keep your needs fulfilled for quite a long time. This listing includes some databases which have both free and paid sources.

1. Free Images

Free Images is the world’s leading source for free stock photos with more than 400.000 high-quality pictures available. This platform is user-based as all its images were shared for free by the community. Not everything you find will be website material. Give it a shot but keep in mind you will need to browse through all the pages for every search as the best pictures are not always displayed in the first search results.

On Free Images pictures are usually labeled under a category from Architecture to World, Landscapes, Objects, Nature and much more. Paid footage results will appear before free pictures and will be shown within a box entitled “Premium Results”, if you click on of these you’ll be guided to one of Free Images sponsors and you’ll be able to buy that picture for a certain price. To have full-access to free images on this Freeimages.com you should sign up as a free user first.

2. Dreamstime

Even though the collection for free pictures at Dreamstime is not as wide as on FreeImages.com, here you’ll also be able to find some high-quality images for your website or blog. At Dreamstime you’ll find many different areas apart from the Free Images, such as Stock Footage, Designers Illustrations, and your personal contributors area if you would like to start selling your own creations at Dreamstime.

3. Free Pixels

This platform offers a wide range of stock pictures for both personal and commercial use. Similar to the two databases presented above, Freepixels also hosts a huge collection of user generated high-quality images, free of charge.

Unlike the other two, Free Pixels highly depends on ads and links to paid sources, so you have to be more aware of what actually are you clicking on. Still, you may find good things here.

4. Photopin

This platform was developed by and for bloggers who constantly need free-rights images to endorse their content. Truth is, unlike the above mentioned platforms, authors of pictures are not registered on Photo Pin as this is, in fact, a collection of millions of Creative Commons pictures from Flickr.

If you want to read more about Creative Commons and what it allows you to do visit this page . Apart from good pictures it is also a great inspirational tool if you are not sure about which way to go. Take a peak.

5. Wylio

Wylio is busy bloggers' best-friend. A tool designed to filter from many Creative Commons platforms the licensed pictures, from all the ones published, that you are allowed to use. And it gets even better, for busy bloggers Wylio helps you not only to find the perfect picture you were looking for, but also helps you to re-size, attribute and embed free pictures easily.

6. Everystockphoto

Like Wylio, Everystockphoto is a license-specific photo search engine which means that it hosts millions of freely licensed photos from hundreds of different sources. However, unlike Wylio, not every picture on Everystockphoto is available for your use, and you should be extra careful if you plan to use the images commercially. If you are interested in using some of the amazing pictures available at Everystockphoto we recommend you to go through the License Rules first.

7. Free Foto

Freefoto.com is a huge platform with thousands of high-quality pictures for online (commercial or non-commercial) or offline (non-commercial) use. Even though Freefoto.com brings you some of the best online pictures available, not everything is for free. Pay attention because many of the free images you are not allowed to use for your own projects, as they accept different licensing criteria.

8. Meme Generator

Meme Generator is a popular platform to browse for Internet’s most popular memes where you can also build your own memes adding your personalized captions. We've used them a couple of times in our last posts . Whether you are looking for a way to illustrate a feeling, a common situation or a type of behaviour, memes will surely help you conveying a visual and entertaining message. On Meme Generator you can also browse for your favourite free images according to the most popular characters on the web, featuring the Ancient Alien Guy, the Y U No meme or the famous Successful Kid.

9. Canva

One of our favourite tools. Canva is a brilliant web-based design software to produce design elements, presentations or even website headers and blog images. Canva is an intuitive tool which offers unlimited possibilities based on current templates or blank documents. Your imagination is the sky for any Canva Project, with the main advantage that you can always personalize your media to better fit your purpose.

10. Infogr.am

The most famous tool to build your own infographics, with great templates and illustrative elements such as graphs, maps, boxes and demographic representations. Design is the best, even though content production features and diversity of possibilities to actually produce what you envision are quite limited.

11. Piktochart

Like Infogr.am, Piktochart is a freemium web-based online tool to design your own Infographics. Even though there are many possibilities to edit and work on free templates, Piktochart also presents a set of very appealing paid ones (with a Pro account with a monthly subscription of $29,99, which is modest compared with the price for customised designer infographics).

Piktochart is a ready-to-use framework to design and produce your content free of charge and with professional design that will leave your visitors impressed.

12. Stock Free Images

Stock Free Images offers you the largest collection of free stock pictures and illustrations. Whether you are a designer, advertiser, or simply looking for some good quality images for your most recent blog post, Stock Free Images offers you free licenses to freely use their material.

You'll be able to find nearly 1 million free to download pictures taken by more than 30.000 photographers. High-resolution images are available within additional paid plans.

The following tools were suggested by our readers

Inmagine

Inmagine is one of the largest photo stock libraries available in the web with more than 30 Million premium stock photos available. Creative minds and businesses all over the world rely on Inmagine high-quality images and photos to illustrate their newest productions. If you are looking for a platform with wide material variety and have a budget available, this is the perfect tool for you.

Pixlr

Pixlr is an online image editor and a useful tool for all that are looking for a solution to edit pictures for their website. Pixlr doesn't try to replace any professional editor, but instead provides professionals with an easy-to-go solution. Pixlr offers three options to use: the Pixlr Editor, with which you can take the most from the most popular editing tools, the Pixlr Express for instant collages or easy modifications, and Pixlr O-Matic, which adds cool-looking effects to your pictures.

Snapwire

Snapwire is a cool source to look for pictures yet with a slightly different concept. Instead of just browsing through infinite libraries to look for the perfect match for your needs, at Snapwire you just let them come to you. How? Well, all you need to do is create a short brief of what you are looking for and set up a price you are looking to pay for it, then you just wait! The whole community of photographers will compete to provide you the best picture according to your needs.

Death to The Stock Photo

Death to Stock Photo is an interesting project developed by two professional photographers which aims at precisely provide bloggers the best, high-quality, pictures for professional and commercial use. By registering you will have free access to certain number of photos every month, delivered on your e-mail. Alternatively you can also register for the premium version where, for $10 per month you will be able to access an extra pack of photos as well as browse through past photos and download them at your convenience.