We all need images ongoing, whether it's for our social media, blogging, email or what other marketing activities we have going on.

But with limited budgets, it's great to take advantage of free images with no copyright.

How to check if your image is free to use?

Before using that perfect image you've found on a website, you need to check and respect copyright laws. There will always be permissions associated with each image you find.

To check if an image is free to use, you can follow a simple process.

Firstly, perform a reverse image search using popular search engines like Google Images or specialized platforms like TinEye.

This will help you find the original source and determine if any usage restrictions are specified.

Or you can explore websites that provide free stock images. However, to keep yourself safe from infringing any copyright law, and to respect the owner of the image, you must still doublecheck on the website that the image is available for use - as things do change regularly!

We have listed the best of the free image no copyright sites below (but always double check as not all images may be available for free use!!)

What is the Creative Commons License?

When it comes to licenses, one commonly encountered is the Creative Commons license. It is a set of copyright licenses that allow creators to choose the permissions they grant to others regarding their work. The licenses range from allowing unrestricted use to specifying certain conditions for usage, such as attribution or non-commercial use.

Understanding the Creative Commons license associated with an image will help you comply with its terms and ensure proper usage in your digital marketing materials.

List of free images no copyright websites

Vintage and black & whites

New Old Stock is exclusively old vintage black and white images, as well as ‘vintage’ posters, including interesting propaganda from the world wars. The images are generally free or unknown, so you will need to double check on the source (credits are always given to make  the task easy).

Aggregator sites

Librestock is an aggregator site that brings in images from lots of different sites. It’s generally updated regularly, but as with all these sites, check that the license on the image is still free.

Because it is an aggregator, some of the images get used a lot, so you might want to dive into some individual photo stock sites with a variety (and possibly contribute to Librestock).

Feature sites

You will need to check that free use is still current before using the image as these sites have free and paid shots! So it really is necessary to pay attention to whether the image is free for use.

https://picjumbo.com/

http://isorepublic.com/

http://negativespace.co/

http://www.gratisography.com/

https://unsplash.com/

https://stocksnap.io/

https://www.pexels.com/

Stock video

There are so many handy tools to create video now, that throwing in a little stock video can really take things to the next level.

The following have some stock video for use under the Creative Commons License.

https://videos.pexels.com/

https://www.videezy.com/ - but check as sometimes it’s only for non-commercial use