One simple and careless action that would violate someone’s copyright can cost so much, so it’s important to spot which is which. You have to make sure that the images that you want to use are free for personal and/or commercial use before you flaunt it on your website or blog.

Having understood the great need for reliable sources of these copyright-free images, I’ve managed to list down this awesome 10 rare sources.

1. Iconfinder

Looking for a huge source of free premium icons? Your search is over with Iconfinder’s huge collection of high quality free stock icons. With it’s over 340,000 icons in stock (where 100,000 of these are icons available for free), this cool website simply holds the largest collection of premium icons in the world.

Iconfinder does not only provide gorgeous icons for a large number of designers, developers and other graphic artists, it also allows them to share and upload their creations through Iconfinder Marketplace. Through this, they can start selling their original creations and earn royalties.

Iconfinder has 40 categories to choose from and 9 available unique styles namely: glyph, outline, flat, photorealistic, 3D, handdrawn, cartoon, pixel and smooth. Some of the icons, though for free, may require you to include link to their author’s website or attribute author as specified in license agreement or GNU.

2. Fotopedia

This website is your ultimate online photo encyclopedia which offers high quality and royalty-free images. Though they also sell photos, you can customize your search in their built-in creative commons search engine which spans several websites.

Take note that, you have to choose from the options under the “photos” tab: “labeled for commercial reuse with modification” so you can freely use and edit your desired image for your blog or website.

Fotopedia also features a vast community of contributors ranging from locals, travelers, bloggers, creative artists and so much more. Signing up for membership is absolutely free. Users are given each unique portfolio of their stories which consist of a cover photo, title, some texts for description and a slideshow view of their very own photo gallery.

3. Pixtastock

Pixtastock offers an incredibly enormous library of 6,000,000 royalty-free stock photos by it’s over 120,000 active contributors. Royalty-free images can be used as many times as you need it. It can also be edited and resized upon purchase.

Though this website primarily sells royalty-stock photos, signing up as a member is just for free. This entitles you for a free, high quality image every week. It has 22 useful categories to choose from and covers a wide variety of images for almost all types of niches.

Pixtastock offer useful search functions and tools to help you easily find what you want. You can makes use of keywords, file number, categories or you can also narrow down your search results by file type, orientation, number of people in images and so forth.

4. Stockvault

Stockvault offers over 10,000 fresh, “web-ready” images for free every day! Just perfect for your latest blog and web page designs. Its free image library now comprises of 44,000 images, ranging from medium to high resolution photographs. Designers and students can share and use these images for their personal and non-commercial design work with absolutely no cost.

You can also share your graphics, photography, arts and image files in this site by simply creating your personal account for free. But if you are in a hurry, you can just type the image that you need on the search bar or choose from the site’s 11 image categories to narrow down your search, and then download your desired image in no time.

5. Unprofound

Unprofound is another awesome resource for online copyright-free images. It started out in 2001 after its owner, named Jim had enough trouble searching out for quality, public domain photos online to use in his designs. According to his story, he then decided to buy his own camera and asked some help with his photographer friends until he was able to learn the craft.

Today, Unprofound has become a global collaboration of photographers. It allows sharing of RF photos, made available for anyone, for any type of use. He just reminded that these images cannot be redistributed and sold individually or to be claimed by anyone except by the original author, but can be used for almost any personal and commercial purpose.

6. Free Media Goo

Free Media Goo is the home of free photos, textures and digital backgrounds. Same with the rest of featured sites in this blog, this crazily amazing site offers royalty-free images that can be used both for personal and commercial purposes.

This makes it easier for web developers to gather photos for print, film, TV, Internet or any other type of media (as the site claims). Though it has less number of categories (6) to choose from compared to other sites which also offer RF images, almost all of its content are classified with high quality.

7. Free Photos Bank

Another cool resource for RF images is Free Photos Bank. It covers a wide range of high quality stock photos that are available in different sizes. It has 9 categories to choose from namely: abstract, architecture, fruits and food, nature, computers and technology, objects, miscellaneous, transportation and life.

Photos in their collection are free so long as you use it for websites, magazines, e-books, etc. Selling photos is strictly prohibited and you must accredit this site in the work where you used their contents.

8. Imageafter

Imageafter claims to be “the raw base for your creativity”.  This is another online collection of photos, vectors and textures for free. Usage for both personal and commercial use is allowed.

You can freely download your desired photo from their huge collection of high resolution photos. All images in this site can be downloaded in JPG and JPEG format, and are mostly donated by their online visitors.

If you are unsure of what image you want to use for your project, you can find the descriptions for each category in this site very helpful.

9. Flickr The Commons