Whether for websites, apps or social media posts, imagery plays a huge role. It’s not always possible to produce your own images and thus online services (and now generators) exist to help with that.
Imagery tips
- Try for a consistent look/feel among imagery that is used – across all channels
- Avoid ‘overly stock’ imagery (poor quality, overly used stock images)
- Poor image selection can downgrade a greatly written piece of content to the point where no image at all may be best
- Ensure images are used in accordance with usage guidelines
- Try for produced-for-you imagery, if budget allows
Imagery resources
Image generators
- Freepik AI image generator
- DALL-E 3 (part of paid version of ChatGPT)
- DreamStudio
- Microsoft Bing Image Creator
- starryai
Quality free stock photography sites
- Pexels – free images; searchable
- StockSnap.io – free images; searchable; browse by ‘trending’
- Gratisography – free images; searchable; browsable by category
- picjumbo – free images; searchable; browsable by category
- Unsplash – free images; searchable
- Negative Space – free images; searchable; browsable by category
- ISO Republic – free images; searchable
- Life Of Pix – free images; searchable
- Jay Mantri – free images; browsable by most recent only
- Kaboompics – searchable; browsable by category
- Vintage Stock Photos – small selection of vintage stock photos; searchable; browsable by category
- SplitShire – free images; searchable; browsable by category
- Startup Stock Photos – free images; browse by latest only
- Burst – free quality stock images; search by keyword or browse popular categories
Quality paid stock photography sites
- iStockphoto – stock photography, images, and videos; range of prices
- Adobe Stock – stock photography at $10 per image (or less by subscription)
- Fotosearch – inexpensive stock photography (starts around $3/image – or less with subscription)
- Getty Images – stock images from around $25 and up; use embed code to use for free