Ask HN: Where can I find high-end stock images for a website? - tixocloud
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whitingx
[http://pixabay.com/](http://pixabay.com/)

[https://stocksnap.io/](https://stocksnap.io/)

[http://www.free-images.cc/](http://www.free-images.cc/)

[https://unsplash.com/](https://unsplash.com/)

[https://www.pexels.com/](https://www.pexels.com/)

[http://librestock.com/](http://librestock.com/)

[http://skuawk.com/](http://skuawk.com/)

[http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/stock-
up](http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/stock-up)

[http://finda.photo/](http://finda.photo/)

[http://foodshot.co/](http://foodshot.co/)

[http://growthtext.com/free-stock-photos/](http://growthtext.com/free-stock-
photos/)

[https://www.stockified.com/](https://www.stockified.com/)

[https://www.negativespace.co/](https://www.negativespace.co/)

[https://everypixel.com/](https://everypixel.com/)

[http://startupstockphotos.com/](http://startupstockphotos.com/)

[https://foodiesfeed.com/](https://foodiesfeed.com/)

[https://picjumbo.com/](https://picjumbo.com/)

[https://www.stockio.com/](https://www.stockio.com/)

hope this helps ツ

~~~
amelius
Great list! Now I'm looking for a similar list for icons. And fonts.

~~~
EGreg
Google Fonts

~~~
paulie_a
This is probably off topic and will irritate designers around the world. But
personally I disable all custom fonts. I have two. Helvatica equivalent and a
monospace. Sizing is limited to 8-14 depending on screen resolution

~~~
ReversedYodel
Another reason to block Google Fonts is that it's (yet another) source of
tracking data for them, not sure if you can self-host those though. Personally
from the sites I've looked at with and without Google Fonts, it's not much of
a loss.

~~~
djcn
I agree why give google everything? You could try
[http://brick.im/fonts/](http://brick.im/fonts/) brick fonts is at least a
choice.. I have used it and it seems fine..I have yet to expand use of brick
fonts but on some sites I see no issues.. nice choice of fonts as well

------
wnm
[https://unsplash.com/](https://unsplash.com/)

~~~
King-Aaron
Since it's sharp rise in popularity around ~12 months ago, it seems like every
new website on the internet is using unsplash imagery

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lprubin
Believe it or not, I've found a decent amount of high quality photos to use on
flickr's creative commons search:

[https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/](https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/)

~~~
yodon
Be careful if the photo includes a person’s face prominently. If it does, the
person in the photo has likeness rights in the photo[0] which the photographer
cannot assign to you without a signed model release form from the subject of
the photo. Most Flickr photographers are amateurs who don’t have model release
forms for their photos.

Plenty of lawsuits have occurred around the use of Flickr photos without model
release forms (there is also a major sub-plot in the Kevin Smith movie “Jay
and Silent Bob Strike Back” that revolves around likeness rights).

Creative Commons is not enough when there are prominent faces in the photo.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights)

~~~
dawnerd
That's why it's better to just pay the premium and use getty or another paid
stock image site.

------
uptown
Unsplash [http://unsplash.com/](http://unsplash.com/)

Burst [https://burst.shopify.com/](https://burst.shopify.com/)

Death to the Stock Photo
[http://join.deathtothestockphoto.com/](http://join.deathtothestockphoto.com/)

New Old Stock [http://nos.twnsnd.co/](http://nos.twnsnd.co/)

Superfamous (requires attribution)
[http://superfamous.com/](http://superfamous.com/)

Picjumbo [http://picjumbo.com/](http://picjumbo.com/)

The Pattern Library
[http://thepatternlibrary.com/](http://thepatternlibrary.com/)

Gratisography [http://www.gratisography.com/](http://www.gratisography.com/)

Getrefe [http://getrefe.tumblr.com/](http://getrefe.tumblr.com/)

IM Free (requires attribution)
[http://imcreator.com/free](http://imcreator.com/free)

Jay Mantri [http://jaymantri.com/](http://jaymantri.com/)

Women of color in tech
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/wocintechchat/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/wocintechchat/)

Public Domain Archive
[http://publicdomainarchive.com/](http://publicdomainarchive.com/)

Magdeleine [http://magdeleine.co/](http://magdeleine.co/)

Foodiesfeed [http://foodiesfeed.com](http://foodiesfeed.com)

Picography [http://picography.co/](http://picography.co/)

Raumrot [http://www.raumrot.com/10/](http://www.raumrot.com/10/)

ISO Republic [http://isorepublic.com/](http://isorepublic.com/)

Source: [https://medium.com/@dustin/stock-photos-that-dont-
suck-62ae4...](https://medium.com/@dustin/stock-photos-that-dont-
suck-62ae4bcbe01b)

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Awesome list! I’ve been a death to stock photo subscriber for a while and love
their work!

------
aantix
These guys are using deep learning/convolutional neural networks to train
their models to detect beautiful/thoughtful photographic images.

[https://www.eyeem.com/](https://www.eyeem.com/)

They talk about their curation algorithms here:

[https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/understanding-
aes...](https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/understanding-aesthetics-
deep-learning/)

------
anon1253
[https://www.shutterstock.com](https://www.shutterstock.com)

------
gnicholas
Note that depending how you find an image, the price may be wildly different.
I searched on iStock and found an image for 30 bucks. Then when I later went
to purchase it, my google search led me to a page where it was listed for
$400. I was eventually able to find it on the $30 page again.

For what it's worth, I did most of my searching in incognito windows to try to
avoid this type of problem. It sure didn't work this time!

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garethsprice
What do you mean by "high end"?
[http://www.gettyimages.com/prestige](http://www.gettyimages.com/prestige) is
about as high-end as it gets in stock photography, but you'll also be paying
handsomely for it.

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Gladdyu
Train yourself a GAN and parameterise/create whatever stock image you want!

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amorphid
For the occasional quick & dirty search, Google images could work. You can
filter for usage rights.

Example screenshot... [https://imgur.com/a/dZ3VH](https://imgur.com/a/dZ3VH)

I didn't see the usage rights filter on the mobile site, but it showed up when
I flipped to the desktop version.

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mauricemooij
[https://www.stocksy.com/](https://www.stocksy.com/)

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diggum
[http://stock.adobe.com/](http://stock.adobe.com/)

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nguggs
[https://www.pexels.com/](https://www.pexels.com/)

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yatsyk
I have same question but for not processed images. You can find high quality
but highly shopped images on sites like unsplash or low quality not processed
images on flickr creative commons search.

But it's very hard to find hight quality images without film effects or other
filters.

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davidp670
I have a bookmark folder for these:
[https://bookmarkos.com/f/PZ_8FUO6Sqw](https://bookmarkos.com/f/PZ_8FUO6Sqw)
My favorites are Unsplash and Pexels

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reillyse
If you want your stock photos to look authentic and high quality check out
[https://www.twenty20.com/](https://www.twenty20.com/)

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vachi
Hey @tixocloud, check out [https://www.haystack.im](https://www.haystack.im)
Let me know what you think, I am one of the founders.

~~~
tixocloud
Thanks. Will check it out.

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developeruk
Can I plug my own little site :-
[https://www.inspiredpics.co.uk](https://www.inspiredpics.co.uk) All free for
commercial use

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bcjordan
I like [https://pond5.com](https://pond5.com), also great for sound effects,
music, video footage, illustrations.

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pashariger
[https://www.haystack.im/](https://www.haystack.im/) is a really great
aggregator and search tool.

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ktkization
For African related photos
[https://africanstockphoto.com](https://africanstockphoto.com)

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rb808
[https://marketplace.500px.com](https://marketplace.500px.com) but it isn't
free

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akvadrako
[https://pxhere.com](https://pxhere.com)

Lots of 16+ MP CC0-licensed works and good filtering options.

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arowatbk
As a few other folks have pointed out it really depends on what you mean by
'high-end'. The stock photo world is divided in a few different segments:
free, microstock, midstock, and premium (as well as commerical and editorial).

Starting at the cheaper/low end you have 'free' imagery (some flavor of
Creative Commons Zero [cc0] license) that lots of sites listed here offer. The
one caution with free (as I think someone else mentioned below) is that the
licenses aren't always clear (what you can and can't use it for) and in some
cases the attribution / provenance of the image is wrong / unclear. Meaning
that what you think you are ok to use, may have actually been appropriated
from someone else; and you are potentially infringing on copyright. I haven't
spent enough time on the different free sites to see what their policies are
regarding provenance, so your mileage may vary.

Then you have the microstock stock imagery - images that are in the
$1-$5/range. Companies in that realm include folks like Shutterstock, 123RF,
Dreamstime, and a slew of others. Shutterstock's public filings says that
their per image license is something like $2.25 (or it was when I looked maybe
a year or two ago). These images are often the ones that people refer to as
'stock' in that they _look_ like stock. Not all of course, but I am sure you
know what I am talking about.

Then you have the realm of 'midstock', which is somewhere between (you guessed
it) the low end and the highend. There are a lot of players in here, but
iStock (from Getty) is probably one of the biggest ones; as well as Adobe's
offering (from when they bought a library called Fotolia). This area of the
industry is increasingly being carved out as prices either go down down down,
or the more unique and premium imagery hold their own.

At the high end of the stock world you have what is called the 'premium' stock
photography folks - this includes Offset (from Shutterstock), Getty Images,
and the new Premium offering from Adobe. Those are the three big players at
the top end of the spectrum, and then you have a lot of smaller studios that
sell directly to end consumers and also place their imagery with the big
three. So in some cases you can find the same imagery across a lot of
different providers.

My background is a photographer and I have images with a bunch of these more
premium folks and looking at my royalty statements the average sale is more in
the $110 range/image. Or ~50x the low-end of the market. So it really depends
on how much $$ you are looking to spend and whether the quality of the image
(beauty in the eye of the beholder and all that) is important to you.

The other site (full disclosure, I am one of the founders) to check out is
[https://haystack.im](https://haystack.im) that aggregates from a couple dozen
different stock agencies all in one place (including several listed here like
Stocksy, EyeEm, 500px, Cavan, Maskot, ImageSource, and a science-focused site
called SciencePhotoLibrary). You can pick one/several agencies to search at
any given time and then we boot you off to them for the final license. So we
are more like a premium stock photo search engine than a distributor of the
stock itself. Think Kayak not Delta.

Hopefully that makes sense. Hit me if you have any stock industry/photography
questions. I am at: andrew@haystack.im

~~~
tixocloud
Thanks very much for the clarification, Andrew. I'll check your site out,
bookmark it and be sure to share with my friends.

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jacobduchen
[https://deathtothestockphoto.com/](https://deathtothestockphoto.com/)

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markwaldron
[https://deathtothestockphoto.com/](https://deathtothestockphoto.com/)

~~~
Angostura
Monthly subscription required - my least favourite model.

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geetfun
More to this awesome list. [https://swagpix.com](https://swagpix.com)

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sbashyal
Shameless plug: [http://aiphotosearch.com](http://aiphotosearch.com)

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nametube
[https://burst.shopify.com/](https://burst.shopify.com/)

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clandry94
[https://burst.shopify.com/](https://burst.shopify.com/)

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gthinkin
Unsplash is the best in my opinion.

www.unsplash.com

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themango
[https://pexels.com](https://pexels.com)

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fecak
[http://pixabay.com](http://pixabay.com)

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ballenf
istockphoto.com

I always start with the free sites, but usually end up using a paid option
especially for images that include people. High quality free landscape type
photos seem more common.

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yatinkal
SabreCMS comes with 1.8 million OOB

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lbj
SabreCMS comes with 1.8 million OOB

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jacamat
Unsplash. Just use Unsplash. :D

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ducttape12
I always liked LibreStock.com

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culturalzero
Will keep this in mind

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sharemywin
I use fotosearch.com

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tomc1985
sxc.hu has a pretty good free section

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justboxing
I've used the following 2.

1) FREE under Creative Commons CC0 -
[https://pixabay.com/](https://pixabay.com/)

2) Mix of FREE & Sponsored / Paid -
[https://unsplash.com/](https://unsplash.com/)

~~~
lovegoblin
All photos on Unsplash are free.

