Pixabay.com - Website for downloading or sharing free pics/vectors & using it as a designer/photographer portfolio

Hi everyone, in this post I would like to introduce this awesome website/platform that I've been using for years. My guess is that Pixabay is more useful for #designers, #photographers and #bloggers, but anyone who need images, without worrying too much about licenses, could benefit from it too.

You can click here to go directly to pixabay.com website.

Using it to download free images

So... this is the main purpose of Pixabay... sharing images for free, but you can also find other kind of medias like videos, music and sound Effects, as you can see below.

If you are a #designer, like me (on my free time, at least), you can use it to download other elements and use them in your own designs and that helps a lot. Not every piece of design you create must be 100% original, and since their license allows you to make modifications, you have this kind of freedom. For example, searching for "hearts" and filtering by "Vector graphics", you get the results below, with some elements you could use.

I don't see a #photographer using it to download anything (but you can use to share your photos... I'll talk about it soon below), unless you're making a composite photo, or something like that. In that case, you can download other photos, to use elements from that to create a composite photography. But, in my opinion, Pixabay would be better to a photographer for inspiration. Search a topic you like or need to work with, and see the results. For example, I love night street pictures, and you can see the result below.

And for a #blogger, since your main objective is to write and not editing images, you could use it only for finding a related pic to your article/post. For example, you can find the photos below if you search for "blog" and you could use it as a cover image for your post.

Their licensing

Their license is one of the main reason I use their website, it gives you a lot of freedom with very few, but acceptable restrictions. As you can see below.

Let's go through the license's topics I have comments on:

• The free for commercial use is great. There are other websites that share their image "for free", but when you see their license, you can't use it for jobs you're getting paid for. Sometimes, you don't have the money to buy stock images, and that helps people;
• "Attribution is not required". Well... as they said in their page, the credit is always appreciated, but sometimes you just can't credit the author of an image or a design element, since it would damage the purpose of it. For example, in this article, I took some screenshots containing pics from other people, but the main purpose is to talk about Pixabay, If I had to attribute everyone, it would take much effort. If you go to printing designs... how would you credit someone for an element you used on a business card? Print the card with "element by <Author>" on it? It doesn't make sense;
• I just don't agree with the point where they don't allow other people to sell unaltered copies of a content. I see Pixabay as a platform to help people, and if someone find a way to use the image to help himself, why not? And one thing... people will use it like this anyway, I've seen one of my images being sold on a t-shirt store and I didn't get bored at all, actually I feel proud when someone uses my pictures;
• I mostly agree on the other points and don't have much to comment about.

You can find their license here

Using it as a portfolio

Well... you can post your design and photos, and get a user page which lists what you have uploaded (You can visit mine here). Of course, this kind of portfolio is to share content that can be used by others for free, so... don't upload works you've done to a specific person/company. But sometimes in those designs, you create elements that can be shared to help others.

You get statistics about the popularity per month of your images.

Or just a grid with all your images where you can sort by some filter, like downloads, which you can use to see if what you're doing is being useful.

I'm saying that you can use it as a portfolio, but my thoughts are that this is like volunteering, you do that to help others. And when you use their platform and start seeing people using your mouse, you can get some satisfaction from it... at least, I feel this way and feel proud when the statistics says my images has more than 1 mi downloads. I must confess that I would like to publish more images there, but sometimes... it lacks the motivation.

And since this can be considered volunteering work... if you're looking for a job, you can add that on LinkedIn (and talk about it on interviews), which can help you.

You can give/get money appreciation

When you download an image from Pixabay, you can give/get some money, as a form of appreciation, through PayPal to the person who created the image, clicking on the "Coffee" button.

As a proof you can get some money sometimes, my PayPal history below. I don't suggest using this as a form of living, since the donations are not so frequent and PayPal gets a big share of it.

My main concerns

These are my main concerns about the platform:

• It's their platform, they can change their form of work and rules anytime they want, and sometimes you could not agree with what has changed;
• There are some images there I would say that violates other licenses, principally when we are talking about logos, people and other things. You must be cautious when using images from the internet. And if the person who posted it is not a frequent user, I suggest you searching if that image is really free for use.

Suggestions for the Pixabay team

• Let users who upload content choose a free license they want to use. Public domain, CC0, unlicense... don't know if it would make things more complicated... This suggestion is because one thing that I wrote in some paragraphs above about allowing people to sell the content on printing products as it is.
• I've noticed that some images are getting related stock images on paid websites, and I believe you're making some money with it (affiliate links?). I don't know if it's much money or just for the website maintenance, but if you are making tons of cash ??, you could share a slice with the contend creators, of course proportionally.

These are just suggestions and don't impact too much on my opinion about the website, which is great!

Pixabay alternatives/similar websites

1. Pexels: much like Pixabay, but only for photographs, so... no vectors there. Their license is much alike Pixabay's license. I recommend this one if you just want photos;
2. Unsplash: just like Pexels, but I think they have a max download cap. And also... now, they're offering a premium "service" called Unsplash+... so... I don't know if they're going to invest more in this premium service and become a freemium website. I don't like when an app/website start with free stuff, and when they get famous, they start charging for it. Let's see what happens in the future. I recommend this one, but keep an eye on them.
3. OpenClipart: great for vectors and the best license, which I agree 100% (the others should get inspired by OpenClipart's license). The only problem with them... too many vectors, that I see as not too much useful... not for me at least... it's better not to judge; I recommend this one for vector elements to use on other designs.
4. Wikimedia Commons: well... I think this one has the biggest database of medias, and you can use them for free, but... they use the "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)" license, which has some restrictions (you have to attribute the author and if you create a derivative work, you have to share your work with the same license or similar);
5. Vecteezy: great for vectors, awesome designs, but... I wouldn't recommend it for commercial use because of their license (too big for me to have interest on reading), and you have to give attribution always;
6. Freepik: I really like this website, they have vectors, templates, photos and others, and they're great! You can use for commercial purpose too. Like Unsplash, they have premium content, so you'll have to filter. And the only problem for me is that you're required to attribute them. As I said before, there are sometimes that you can't just attribute the author (print medias for example).
7. Many others: ha ha ha, well... if you search for "Pixabay alternatives" you're going to find tons of page listing different websites. You need to find the best that suits you.

Conclusion

After this long post (I think I've said in another post that I don't like long posts) and after everything I've said/wrote, I want to conclude by reinforcing what I've said in some paragraphs above. I see those free (that are really free) websites you share content for other to reuse as a big help for those who can't afford to pay for stock images, principally for those who are starting in this industry or just do this kind of work to survive. When you post, you're helping them and when you see the download counts, you can see how much impact you're making on society.