Free or less expensive Royalty Free Photo, Stock Photo & Illustration Sources

bikeTake your own photos and jazz them up using a free service like Picnik.com for images you know you can use anyway you want!

deviantArt.com is a huge community of designers and art enthusiasts who regularly post their creations. You can find just about anything - photos, textures, backgrounds, illustrations, fonts and more - some are free, some require payment.

Flickr.com is one of the largest collection of user generated photography on the web. You can literally find anything on Flickr. The key to using Flickr images is understanding the various usage terms. Leah at Working Solo wrote a great, easy to understand post on how to use Flickr images.

Freedigitalphotos.net offers images that are free for web use or can be purchased if you need the high resolution version. No registration is required and you can sell your own images as well.

Imageafter.com is not the most intuitive site to navigate, but it does have more than 21,000 free photos and textures for personal or commercial use.

Imagechef.com is one of my favorite places to get free, fun, one of a kind images for your blog posts. Start with one of a huge variety of basic images, add your own words and phrases, and end up with an image that can easily convey 1,000 words.

Morguefile.com serves as the afterlife for a large volume of free high resolution digital stock photographs and reference images for either corporate or public use. Think of it as digital photography heaven and rather than destroying what they don’t use, many photographers submit their “leftovers” to Morguefile for others to use. Individual images have different usage requirements, so please read everything before using.

Picapp.com is a great source of free editorial and news images. Ideally, it is for bloggers but their images can be used in other media. Now that Picapp.com has a Wordpress plugin, adding news quality images to your post doesn’t get any easier than this.

Photogen.com contains free photos for personal or commercial use. You do have to register in order to download, but you may also upload your own photos for others to use (but you are not compensated).

Stockvault.net is a lot like Freedigitalphotos.net in the sense that the images are free for download, no registration is required and you can share your photos, too.

Stockxchng (aka sxc.hu)offers a large selection of free stock photos and some illustrations. Terms of use request you give them credit as the image source. As a part of the Jupiterimages.com group, Stockxchng also offers premium images.

VERY INEXPENSIVE IMAGE SOURCES

giftBigstockphoto.com is a relatively new service from my perspective having just recently found it. Their inventory of more than 2 million images is certainly a good place to start when looking for art. Like many of the other sources in this category, you purchase credits in blocks (roughly $2 per credit) and images run anywhere from 1-6 credits depending on their size.

Dreamstime.com has an inventory of over 4 million images ranging from free to $5 or so. If you buy credits in bulk, they can be as low as 20 cents an image. If you sell your own images the payout is between 50% and 80%. New photos are being added constantly - there are already photos from the Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl Parade from 2009. The site is also available in a choice of languages.

Fotalia offer access to more than 4 million images, vectors and video via individual purchase ($1-$5 each) or via subscription. Very similar to many services in this category, Fotalia allows you to upload your own images for sale and has a community aspect.

sgpiStockphoto.com is one of the sites I use most. Very high quality images and a huge selection make iStockphoto my first choice when looking for photos, vector illustrations, flash, video or audio files for projects. Most images run $1-5 and you buy credits in blocks. You can submit your own images for sale and they have a very active community of artists, designers and marketing pros. Get free images with the Free Image of the Week featured at iStockphoto, too. I usually download these whether I think I will need them or not - because you just never know when they might come in handy.

Stockxpert.com is very similar to iStockphoto in that it carries some of the most reasonably priced, highest quality royalty-free stock images in the $1-10 range. It has a fantastic selection of photos, animation, and illustrations. You may sell your own images, too.

Vecteezy.com specializes in free to inexpensive user submitted vector graphics. While the collection is much smaller than most I have referenced, the quality is pretty good. Sister sites include Flasheezy (Flash files for download) and Brusheezy (Photoshop brushes).

INEXPENSIVE SUBSCRIPTION ONLY SERVICES

snowmanAnimationFactory.com - need to dress up those boring PowerPoint presentations? AnimationFactory has more than 500,000 animated clip art (use sparingly), PowerPoint templates, backgrounds and videos. Subscriptions run from $60-200 per year and give you access to unlimited downloads. (Bonus - use this link for 25% off your subscription)

Clipart.com has more than 10 million pieces of royalty-free clip art, photos, vinyl-ready images, Web graphics, illustrations, fonts and sounds available via subscription. Subscription rates are for one week up to one year.

Designious.com is not quite as big as many of the others in this list but they do have some great designs - especially if your audience is in the 15-30 range. You can search for royalty-free stock vectors, vector illustrations and t-shirt designs. Buy stock vectors one by one or have access to all of them via subscription.

iCLIPART.com has millions of downloadable royalty-free clipart images, photos, objects, web graphics, sounds and fonts by subscription. Their images tend to be more on the whimsical side. A monthly subscription is $19.95, however right now you can get the whole year for $29.95 - which is a great deal if this is the type of art you find yourself looking for on a regular basis (perfect for bloggers, teachers, and such)

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