Little known photos sites

As a web designer, you need to use images whenever you build a new site. And lots of them! There are lots of paid image sites out there, of course - Depositphotos, for example.

But sometimes your client won't have a big budget, and you will need to use free images. The only problem is that most of the free sites have either poor quality images or a small number of pictures. And if they're really good, everyone is using them, so you'll have to reuse the same pictures that pop up everywhere on the Internet.

So how can you get access to high quality pictures that are 100% free, and yet aren't frequently used? Here are my best picks.

1. FreeFoto

FreeFoto.com brands itself as the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet. I'm not so sure about that, but these guys have got over 130,000 images, neatly organized in 3600+ categories. The good news is that new images are being added each week.

All of this sounds really good, but there is a (minor) catch, though; you will have to give credit to the site for the downloaded images. But if you are OK with that, FreeFoto will prove to be a valuable resource.

2. Free Digital Photos

This site offers not only photos, but also illustrations that have been created by professional photographers and illustrators.

There is a drawback: sometimes you will discover that some of their great looking images aren't free. Well, I guess that just like the rest of us, the website owners need money to buy their groceries. It's not a big deal, though, and the quality of the free images is outstanding!

3. Open Stock Photography

I'm sure you've heard about Wikimedia Commons. It's a site launched by Wikimedia Foundation, who play a very active role in the Wikipedia project. "But what's that got to do with free stock photos?", you may ask.

Well, all the files that have been uploaded by Wikimedia's registered users and are free to use, can be found on the Open Stock Photography website. There are over 2,000,000 (yes, two million!) images and graphics, which can be used for your web design projects.

4. Free Images

This site will come in handy whenever you need some illustrations to go with those fancy designs. Now don't get me wrong - the website includes lots of photos as well, and they are organized in categories such as "animals", "architecture", "arts", "design", "automotive", "business", "celebrities", and so on. I'm just scratching the surface here, really!

The free collection includes close to 400,000 photos, while the premium section of the site hosts over 2.4 million images.

5. Free Media Goo

Let's end this article with a site that very few people know about: Free Media Goo. The website has split its high-quality images in three categories: photos (aviation, beach, finance, food, etc), textures (concrete, dirt, rust, etc) and backgrounds (digital and surreal).

The site relies on its own team and the efforts of volunteers to grow constantly; new images are being added to it each month.