These are the best free image banks
Any of these image repositories allows hundreds of photos to be downloaded free of charge for use in a variety of classroom projects, as well as on blogs or social networks.
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by , Updated: Among the free resource repositories there are, for example, 3D image banks or with free music. This time, we want to share the best free image banks. You can use them in the classroom, in social networks and blogs, or to create any content you want for non-commercial purposes.
Best Free Image Banks
These are repositories and web platforms where you can download images completely free, for personal use and for use in your educational projects.
Free Images
It currently has a media library with nearly 390,000 photos and illustrations that are organized by theme. For its use and downloads it is essential to be registered. It also has a premium section with more than two million photos.
Pixabay
Royalty-free photos, illustrations, vectors and videos under the Creative Commons CC0 license is what this site offers. The material is organized by categories: animals, sports, education, music, science… and can be accessed by simply registering. It is one of the most complete free image bank services.
Open Photo
Organized in categories and tags, this service gathers more than 15,000 free images. The search is fast and efficient, and the use is so simple that it does not even require registration.
Flickr
In the Creative Commons section of this website you can find free images that many users have decided to offer. The user can browse or search for content with each type of license.
Free Digital Pictures
It allows you to download small photos and illustrations for free and also offers the option to buy larger versions.
Dreamstime
By simply registering, it is possible to access tens of thousands of free images. Its search engine stands out, which, in addition to different categories, allows you to set different search parameters to filter the images, as well as information on interesting data for each of them (author, size, rating…).
FreePik
It has over 1.5 million free images including photos, illustrations, icons, PSD and multi-themed, high-resolution vectors. It is one of the most widely used free image banks.
IM Free
It is not characterized by millions of images, but because all the images it includes have been selected, so that it only has high quality photographs. It is available in five languages (including Spanish), and organizes the images in collections.
Refe
Its peculiarity is that all the images it offers for download have the same theme: different people using all kinds of technology appear in them. It allows searches by packages and also by keywords.
Ancestry Images
More than 31,100 historical images from the 17th century, and especially from the late 18th and 19th centuries. Includes maps, illustrations, portraits and other publications.
ISFTIC Multimedia Resource Bank
In addition to photographs and illustrations, this site created by INTEF to facilitate the creation of teaching materials also includes sounds, animations, videos and symbols of different subjects and levels.
Free image bank from Wikimedia Commons
A media library that has 23,896,588 free multimedia files, including photos, videos, animations or music classified by theme, author, license, source, format… When you use it for the first time you can access a selection of outstanding images, quality images or valuable images, which have been voted on by the community.
Free image bank of the National Teacher’s Library
It opens the door to old and historical collections comprising over 2,500 digitized images (photographs, illustrations, prints and historical maps). Searches can be made using a form or by browsing the subject categories, then an enlarged version of the images can be accessed for printing, saving or emailing.
Free image bank from Realia Project
The Realia project (Rich Electronic Archive for Language Instruction Anywhere) publishes images that have been reviewed and approved by a commission of experts and are specifically designed for the study and teaching of modern languages and their cultures. The website is in English.
Aragonese Portal for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ARASAAC)
The ARASAAC portal offers graphic resources and materials to facilitate communication for those people with some kind of difficulty in the area of communication. This project has been financed by the Department of Industry and Innovation of the Government of Aragon. It is currently coordinated by CAREI, technically supported by CATEDU and financed by the European Social Fund.
Morguefile free image bank
It has a catalogue of 13 million high quality images that can be downloaded without the need to create an account. Very interesting is its Classroom section, where they give some basic notions to anyone who wants to learn how to make photographs as creative as those available in this bank.
Creative Commons Search
This search engine allows you to make a simultaneous search in the most popular image banks on the web, including Flickr, Foto Pedia or Google Images. Please note that all images are licensed under Creative Commons, so you should always cite the author of the photograph.
Free Stock Vault Image Bank
In addition to thousands of free images (it is considered by many to be one of the best image banks on the Web), it offers many other possibilities that give it significant added value. Among them, a wide variety of tutorials and a large community of design and photography professionals.
Deviant Art
A very curious selection of photographs and artistic illustrations. They can be downloaded or shared directly on social networks (Facebook, Twitter,Tumblr or Pinterest), although care must be taken to ensure that the permissions cited by the author allow this.
Unsplash (one of the best free image banks)
Among all the free image banks, Unsplash may be among the highest quality, since its content is a selection and a screening of those found in other portals. Images with certain quality standards, in many cases with filters and that are far from the most common stock photographs.
Lorempixel’s free image bank
The case of Lorempixel is curious, since it is a tool for web developers that provides standard images on certain categories and topics. We assign you some dimensions and a category (animals, food, people, sports…) and it automatically gives us a random image of your bank. It can give rise to an interesting game for, with the image that it returns, to carry out some activity.
Pexels – free image banks
Another of those very complete and quality image meta-searches, Pexels searches for stock photos on different platforms and returns the results that best fit your search. We can download the image in different resolutions or even search them through already defined categories. It is one of the most used free image banks.
StockSnap
A great search engine for royalty-free images that we can download and use in our class work. Many of them are very elegant and with thousands of results at our disposal, on all subjects and subjects we have and will have.
PLiXS
A creative photography community in which most results are freely licensed for use. PLiXS also makes use of other portals -like Unsplash- to show the results more in line with your searches, and adds important information to let us know how we should give credit or use them in our works.
Freerange Stock – Best free image banks
This photographic community has a large image bank, created by its own professionals, which are edited before being posted on the web, thus ensuring its good condition. They can be used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes (without having to attribute their authorship). To access them and download them to any computer or mobile device, prior registration is required.
Stock Photo Free Image Bank
Joined to Storyblocks and VideoBlocks, this website offers the user, once the registration is completed, access to the 100,000 photos that it stores, which can be used for all types of projects regardless of whether or not they are of a commercial nature. The use license is unlimited and prevents, on the other hand, its redistribution or sale.
ImageBase free image bank
Without the need for prior registration, it allows you to obtain images in three different resolutions, original, large and small, adapted to the needs of the user. All of them are free of charge and can be used for any job regardless of whether it is going to be monetized or not. It also includes PowerPoint templates with which you can improve the design of your presentations.
Free RGB Stocks image bank
On this photographic platform, the user can find both photographs and graphics and illustrations, divided into various categories and which can be accessed via the search engine it incorporates. 110,000 images in total that can be used for any activity, as long as it does not have any immoral or illegal purpose. Requires prior registration.
Vector.me
This image bank contains more than 150,000 images in vector format, which can be used freely for various commercial or non-commercial projects. Organized by categories, they can be accessed directly or by using the search engine at the top of the website.
Free image bank of Stokpic
This platform has high quality images and a complete catalogue of photographs that is enlarged every two weeks. It divides the images into different categories: animals, architecture, landscapes, food, people… As it is not allowed to redistribute the graphic content, the snapshots from this platform are not in other image banks.
