What images should I put on my website?
When it comes to put a photo on a website, a blog or to make a poster, I recommend you use your own images, but often we do not have the image we wish or it needs some retouching that slow down our work. That is why it is good to know what the stock images are and what they are for, especially since the web and graphic works are one of the most important resources to develop projects. However, you need to keep in mind one fundamental thing: stock images are available for everyone, so the excessive use of them, when making your web, can get photos repeat in other works and, therefore, produce the loss of uniqueness of your design. Thus, you have to know and have in mind when are you going to use the stock images, in order not to abuse them.
In this case, the best advice I can give is to try to always use your pictures, especially for corporate images or those that will be in the initial part of your website. You must be careful about to put stock images as the first image of your website, as it gives bad impression and suspicion to the users. Remember also the importance of using good images to decrease the bounce rate.
As we know, elements forming websites must have an agreement between themselves. In the same way we have chosen some colors and not others for corporate image, we also have to be very critical of the images we use. The main recommendation regarding the stock images is to use very general or detailed images that make realistic the content of the website. The stock images should be a complement on the website, but not the main focus, since it can give impersonality to it. A good strategy images along with a good combination of creative typographies (7 examples here that you can copy and use freely) attract users to your website.
What is a stock images?
It is a place where we can find pictures that fit our needs by having a very extensive photographic catalog.
These stock images can be categorized into two types, those that offer free pictures and those in which you have to buy images, while the price of these is usually quite inexpensive and have a high quality and variety of resolutions.
Thus, stock images are basically collections of photographs, prints, drawings … images in general. They serve as file and reference, and as a starting point for many activities.
At present, stock images online offer the chance to post and view millions of images from users all over the world, allowing users to access to a wide variety of images in a simple and fast way.
You must keep in mind that although “Google Images” allows us to access to a large number of images, not all of them are free to use, so we must check what uses are allowed when using them for commercial purposes. It is easy to fall into the mistake of thinking that all the pictures from “Google Images” are free to use.
Free stock images
Stock.xchng
It has a magnificent library of nearly 400,000 images covering all subjects, and perhaps it is one of most famous free stock images, because of its good quality of images.
It has a search engine to locate images, based on the topic we need, and it requires prior registration to access to images.
OpenPHoto
It is one of the first stock images that appeared so it has a large library. Images are sorted by categories.
Stockvault.net
Stockvault has a small but very high-quality collection of stock photos, and logo templates, cliparts, textures … It’s the perfect place to find graphics for your website. However, you should keep in mind that the images are only free for personal use.
FreeMediaGoo
Although it is a small library, it has very good images. No registration is needed.
Morguefile
The best feature of this site is its excellent search tool. It can filter by categories, keywords, size, description, even colour, so we can find the desired picture quickly and effectively.
Most images are freely licensed, so we can use them for both professional and personal use.
Flickr
It is the biggest photo sharing site on the web, used by some of the best photographers in the world.
Not everyone allows the commercial use of their photos, but you can filter them by visiting the Advanced Search page, and then selecting “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content” or any other license.
Gettyimages
This stock image contains free and paid images. It should be pointed out its search engine, which has an option to search for ideas, which is quite practical when locating images.
It has also come to our attention that it has royalty free videos for download and in this case, they are all in Spanish.
You must remember to combine the images prudently by building designs with good typographies, and have a clear strategy in the use of colors (yellow, red, black…) and textures. Do you find the article interesting? Do you know any other stock image that can be included in the list?
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Thank you for your opinion!
Regards!
Hi Veronica,
thanks for the great list.
Thank you Andy!
I am happy that you like it! 😉