Choosing the right images for your content is an essential part creating and publicising your content on Social News and Bookmark sites. A misleading or outright poor image may be the difference between success and failure.This post will guide you through sourcing great free images on the web.

Your visitors will scan your website very quickly. Quite often, they are gone before your page fully loads. Two or three pages after they are gone, they might have completely forgotten about your website. Not only do visual Indicators play an important role in attracting new visitors on social networks, keeping your website’s bounce rates down and your page views up, they can also help your visitors remember your content better.

It is known that our brains remember images much more easily than text, and choosing quality images might just spark that little something to bring someone back to your site. Do not under-estimate the importance of spending a few extra minutes choosing the right images for your content.

What is a Good image?

When looking for an image for your content, it is important to consider some of the most obvious flaws in online images.

Clutter
Unintended clutter destroys an image. Less is more when choosing an image for your content. An image that is too busy will make your reader’s eyes more likely to wonder away from your image and away from your story. A good photo should draw the viewer into the focal point.

Subject Clarity
Is it clear what the subject matter of an image is? Sometimes cropping an image can greatly improve its value dramatically. There are a number of online editing tools that can help you edited an image, such as, Splashup.com

Size & Detail
Although some images are great when they are large, they lose most of their detail when they are resized for social networks. Often images are reduced to thumbnails so try to select images which are simple and effective. When you are struggling for an image which fulfils all the criteria, then you can have two images in your content, a header image and an image which works at a smaller size.

Once you have eliminated the non usable images, you are still left with large number of choices. In one of my previous positions in publishing, I spent a lot of time sourcing images for online content. I found that the most effective way of finding images is to go through the article and pick out words that help to give an indication as to the story. Sometimes it’s a sentence that really sums up a story, or sometimes it’s just a word. If you don’t have an idea of what you are looking for, then how are you supposed to find it?

When thinking of a suitable image, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• What does this image have to say?
  Think to yourself what you want your image to say. The best images will give the user an idea of what the story is about before they have read the headline or strap. This is not always possible depending on the subject of the piece, but attempts should be made to find these sorts of images.
• Will other bloggers want to use this image on their site?
  Sometimes bloggers will blog about your content and use the original image. Selecting a good image will mean that wherever your content is, it will be backed up by a decent picture.

Copyright

Copyright is one of the most fearsome things for people when searching out images to use on their website. The images in the libraries below are either:

Public Domain
This material is not owned or controlled by anyone. You are free to do as you wish with it. You must however watch out for names, logos, and other identifying marks which may be under copyright within the image.

Or

Copyleft and Similar Licenses
Sometimes known as viral or reciprocal licenses, this usually means that you can do as you like with the original image as long as the license remains intact. There are many difference licenses, and it is a good idea to have a quick look to see what the conditions are. Usually, a small link to the author underneath the image or at the end of the post will be all that is necessary.

We like to send the author a quick message telling them where the image is being used regardless of whether they ask for it. It’s a nice gesture of appreciation and it’s the least we can do for quality free images. On many occasions, you will find that the author of the work will write you back with higher resolution images or a choice of similar ones.

Free Stock Libraries

We have put together a list of royalty free stock libraries to help you on your search. There are many free stock libraries out there, but the ones below are the ones I use regularly because of the quality and selection of images they have.

Stock.xchng:
Bookmark this. It is the best collection of quality images on the web. Some of the images found here are equal to many commercial stock photos.

Morguefile:
A great selection of images.

Flickr:
Not all photos here are free, but using the advanced search function will return some real gems. Skelliewag.org has a great guide to understanding Flickr copyright.

KAVEWALL:
A comprehensive source for textures.

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia has probably the most diverse collection of images anywhere. You should note that this diversity applies both to image content as well as image quality. There will be incredible images nestled next to some real eyesores.

NASA:
Yes, Nasa images are free to use!

US Fish and Wildlife Services:
All images are of the Public Domain. It will take some searching, but there are a few quality wildlife and nature images here.

The NOAA Library:
Great library of science and nature photography.

Free Range Stock:
Nice selection images. It’s nice to know that photographers get rewarded with revenue sharing here.

Graphicsarena.com:
It’s not the quantity but the quality here.

Fotogenika:
Don’t let the non-english put you off, just click on the great images.

Image Temple:
More nice images.

Pixel Perfect Digital:
A massive collection of images.

Image After:
A great collection of photography to use however you want as long as you do not distribute them on another photo library!

PD Photo:
Looking for urban and rural landscapes? Look no more.

Yotophoto:
Although yotophoto claims to index many of the other sites on this page, it doesn’t seem to index everything on each site. Either way, it is still a good way to search a portion of many of these sites in one go.

Stockvault:
Nicely categorised for easy searching.

Public Domain Photo:
Over 500 photos, all of which of Public Domain.

Open Stock Photography:
This site offers over one million images for you to download and use however you want.

ImageBase:
A small but nice collection of photography, especially like the concept photography here.

Do you have websites or tips to add to this post? Please do so in the comments.