29 amazing sites for royalty-free Linkedin photos
Tom Mallens
Director at Renegade RevOps | Training, coaching & development programmes for managers & salespeople in engineering, manufacturing & industrial technology ???? | Co-Host of the Renegade RevOps Show ??
On the basis that a picture paints a thousand words, the more attention-grabbing pictures you can find to share your story and promote your brand the better. Good pictures, images and photos will help you stand out from the crowd on Linkedin and attract attention from high-value potential customers, win-win collaborators and key influencers in your industry.
You can use pictures in many places on Linekdin, including your:
- Profile header picture
- Profile summary pictures
- Home feed updates
- Group conversations
- Post header pictures
- Company page updates and more . . .
The trouble is, stock photography websites can be expensive (especially if you're only using the images once), the pictures are not always available for commercial purposes, people may have seen them used elsewhere and the pictures can be inauthentic-looking.
With only a few exceptions, you're not allowed to use the images you find in Google searches – usually because the pictures are still covered by the original photographer's copyright. Instead, you can find royalty-free images, which typically fall into one of two categories:
Creative Commons Zero (CC0)
This means you can use the photos in any way you'd like, without asking permission.
Creative Commons with Attribution (CCA)
A variation of the CCO licence, this means you can use a photo in any way you like, provided you give the name of the photographer. If you use a photo, simply write "Photo by Jane Smith" and, ideally, add a link to their website.
Here are 25 websites you can use to source high quality and completely free stock photographs, images and pictures to make your Linkedin profile stand out from the crowd and attract the right sort of attention:
1. Minimography
A collection of distinctive minimalist, and royalty free, photographs, with new photographs uploaded regularly.
2. Pexels
An extensive database of photographs for personal and commercial use. You can use the photos for any legal purpose under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
3. Pixabay
The Rolls-Royce of free photo sites; 640,000 free stock photos, vector graphics and art illustrations.
4. Realistic Shots
7 new photos are added every week to this site for both personal and commercial use.
5. Foodies Feed
If you work in the catering or nutrition sectors, this could be the site for you. Thousands of food-focussed pictures, including special sections for pictures of craft beers and pasta & pizza.
6. Death To Stock
As the name implies, this is a photo site created by designers who HATE the banal and generic photos found on most paid-for sites.
7. Splitshire
A varied range of pictures, including many unusual categories.
8. Stock Snap
This rapidly-growing service will email you a weekly zip file of new photographs direct to your inbox.
9. Kaboom Pics
Focussing on food, fashion, landscape and abstract pictures, this site categorises everything with searchable hashtags to help you find related pictures quickly.
10. Fancy Crave
Sign-up to this web service and you'll get 14 free high-quality CC0 licence photos every week.
11. Pic Jumbo
Started by photographer Viktor Hanacek after his pictures were rejected by well-known paid-for sites. Today, three million images have been downloaded from his website.
12. Startup Stock Photos
A free site aimed at helping bloggers, publishers, web designers and start-up entrepreneurs source pictures that represent their daily working lives (in other words, Apple computers and coffee).
13. Picography
Beautiful urban and countryside pictures with a monthly free email service.
14. Skuawk
A neatly categorised set of pictures available under the CC0 licence, covering food, business, landscapes, cityscapes, wildlife and beyond.
15. LibreShot
Varied range of pictures of life in and around Prague (and beyond) by photographer Martin Vorel and available for personal and commercial use. Attribution isn't necessary – although he likes it where possible.
16. Unsplash
Striking images of everything from office work to galaxies. Sign-up and you'll get 10 new images every 10 days.
17. Super Famous
Focussing on landscapes and buildings, these images are available for any kind of commercial use, as long as attribution is given.
18. IM Creator
A curated collection of free web design resources, all for commercial use and all neatly categorised into sections covering business, sports & fitness, fashion and more.
19. Gratisography
A brilliant collection of quirky images by photographer Ryan McGuire. Very distinctive pictures that will raise a smile.
20. Morguefile
If you like flowers and animales, this site is packed with pictures of them for you to use free.
21. Free Images
A huge resource of 388,494 free photos and illustrations.
22. Little Visuals
A beautiful site with a sad story behind it. The young photographer behind the site died suddenly and unexpectedly. His family keep the site running to raise awareness of Sudden Adult Death syndrome.
23. New Old Stock
An amazing resource of free vintage photos of life in the 19th and 20th century.
24. Refe
The site's mission is to "provide high-quality imagery of peopel interacting with technology".
25. Jay Mantri
Free abstract pictures from the life and travels of photographer (hidden Jay Mantri.
26. Public Domain Archive
This site has received 272,096 downloads so far, thanks to an extensive collection of pictures.
27. Designer Pics
Free high-resolutions shots for personal and commercial use.
28. Splashbase
A portal allowing you to search and download pictures from 19 of the most popular free image websites.
29. All The Free Stock
An aggregation site listing photographs from other sites displaying images available under a CC0 Commercial Commons Zero licence - otherwise know as 'do whatever you like with them'.
In summary
This list of free photo sites is by no means exhaustive. For general use on Linkedin, I'd recommend Pixabay every time. It's fast, easy to use and has an incredible range of pictures appropriate for almost all areas of business.
Until the next time, stay winning!
Tom
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tom Mallens is a consultant and trainer in social media marketing and a DISC behaviour profiler – the world's leading system for helping companies build strong teams, managers and leaders who enjoy their work and perform brilliantly). He is author of the book Get Past The Gatekeeper and director of manufacturing sales business Fibrecore, which sells aluminium honeycomb and panels to the automotive, marine and composites sector
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3 年It's really helpful.
Digital Marketing Executive
4 年Incredibly useful, Thank You
For Emerging & Established Executives to Kickstart Visibility, I Wrangle Ideas & Curate Content to Accelerate Professional Goals ?? Invisible ?Influential
4 年great resource Tom Mallens
Marketing at Qfc
4 年Hello Tom! This was a great read. Having all these definitions is awesome as I cannot even tell you how many times I am looking them up, oh and having a list that lists ones that are actually free and many look good, I didn't think that existed. Hopefully, our paths will cross again. Thanks again!!