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Bruno Joseph

Pexels 3.0 - Best free stock photos in one place

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Pexels is a search engine for free stock photos you can use today. This should be your go-to destination when searching for a photo for your next project, or anything.

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Jack Smith
there seem to have been lots and lots of stock photo websites posted to product hunt. does any one have any insights as to how they compare?
Ingo Joseph
Maker
@_jacksmith Compared to other free stock photo providers Pexels has a huge and a fast growing library with only high-quality pictures. Moreover, we have a powerful search and we’re constantly improving Pexels.
Scrivs
@_jacksmith To be honest they are all starting to have the exact same photos. Hitting up aggregators like allthefreestock.com always seems to be my course of action.
Elia Morling
@_jacksmith I like to be open minded, loving and caring. However, why the heck do we have a new photo aggregation site at the top on PH every week? Can someone please explain?
Ross Currie
@_jacksmith I've used a few. Pexels is user friendly and has a good selection. Licensing details are very clear and easy to find. They're also not pushing the premium photos in your face like some of the other free stock aggregators
Bruno Joseph
Maker
We just launched the third version of Pexels. With this version we want to make it even easier to find completely free stock photos. What has changed since the last version? - You can like photos to save them for later and to motivate the photographer - We now add 20 new images per day (twice as many as before) - You can upload your own photos to Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/submit-ph... - A new discover page (https://www.pexels.com/discover/) - API (https://www.pexels.com/api/) - Many design improvements (new header, larger preview images, beautiful new photo details, …) We hope you like the changes. If you have any question about Pexels I'll be more than happy to answer them.
Joshua Dance
@3runjo Any plans to allow image tagging?
Sam Schooler
@joshdance @3runjo I think they already have tagging in the sense that I'm thinking of. When you upload right under the picture there is a form for tags.
Siddharth Gupta
@joshdance @3runjo just about to say this. Pexels is by far the best resource for free images, but I find that the in-built tagging categories are too broad.
Steven Lam
@3runjo If your stock photos are free. How can Pixel be sustainable as a business model? Will Pixel indemnify all of these free stock images being offered on your platform?
Pedro Wunderlich
@3runjo In my opinion, the best free stock photos website of the bunch. Great interface, phenomenal selection. Congrats on the launch!
Ben Tossell
As @_jacksmith says there are lots of alternatives posted on Product Hunt. I'm really curious to know what sets one apart from the other? Is there really enough space in this market for so many? Lots of features are replicated across many of these 'duplicate' sites.
Daniel Frese
@bentossell I guess Pexels was one of the first of it's kind. All pictures are hand-selected to maintain a very high quality standard and also tagged so it's easy to search through the photos.
Ben Tossell
@danielfrese yeah so I'm keen to know whether being first was a big factor in this space and then loyalty prevails
Daniel Frese
@bentossell I think that in the long run in this space network effects and the total number and quality of pictures is the most important factor. In the end it's a marketplace with supply and demand.
Ben Tossell
@danielfrese yeah I get that but as there are so many in the space, there is almost unlimited choice
Daniel Frese
@bentossell That's true. It's gonna be interesting to see how the quality, quantity and searchability (tags, description) of pictures of different free stock photo sites will develop since in theory they can all acquire the same content because the pictures are all licensed under the CC0 license. My theory is that the site which has the best combination out of these factors (quality, quantity, searchability, discovery, first mover advantage) will lead the pack.
Gabriel Reynard
Pexel is one of the best sources for high quality stocks. This new version makes it easier to find and download images.
Bruno Martins
I've tried a lot of different free stock photos websites and Pexels as been my number one go to source for my needs. Great work on the update guys!
Diego Iglesias
awesome work, best free stock image site no doubts
Matt Hagner
Pexels has definitely been the most user friendly stock photo website I've used. Glad to see they are still working at it and making improvements.
Nikola Novakovic
I love Pexels. Found a few sweet wallpapers for my mac :)
Daniel Pichel
I love it! Great stuff @3runjo
Adam Cochran
First let me say that Pexels is awesome. Second, and perhaps more importantly - thank you for all the work you've done on it. I've been using Pexels for quite some time and at the end of the day there is simply no other source of high quality cc0 pictures that compares. No questions here, just wanted to make sure you got the appreciation you deserve for this kickass site.
Ingo Joseph
Maker
@adamscochran Thanks a lot!
Ed DeCaria
I've spent a ton of time on stock photo sites recently and Pexels is a clear #1, in my opinion. Easy search functionality, fast browse/load, great quality, clear terms, etc. And video.pexels.com is a hidden treasure. If you search PH for stock photo sources it is true that you will find a bunch of listings, many with 100+ upvotes, but having spent time on nearly all of those listed I'd say save yourself some time and just use Pexels (especially because, as has been pointed out, there is a lot of overlap in terms of the photos themselves). FWIW, others that I've had some success with are stocksnap.io, jaymantri.com, and unsplash.com.
chris busse
Two questions: 1. In the license section it says, "Identifiable people may not appear in a bad light or in a way that they may find offensive, unless they give their consent." ... that feels a little loose for professional/commercial usage - any plans to integrate model releases? 2. I'm curious what your submitters find as their primary motivation for offering free work? Is it the link back to the source, or do you find there are other motivations? Do you have any case studies of outcomes where the submitter has benefited from listing on your service? (Especially curious given the nature of the "no spec / no creative work for free" movement.)
Ingo Joseph
Maker
@busse Thanks a lot for your feedback! We currently don’t have plans to include model releases but I’ll add it to our ToDo list. Until then you could ask the photographer if she/he has a model release. One reason why our photographers submit their photos is because they get a link to their website or portfolio. But more important is that they often want to help the community or want to get some feedback for their photos. Or they also use pictures from Pexels and they want to give something back.
Leonel More
@busse your #2 question is a very good one. My hobby is photography and I have some good shoots, but no matter what I do I can't get a penny for them. It is not easy to be a photographer nowadays, unless you sell your soul taking wedding photos, etc. I don't see the benefit of releasing in Pexels nor a similar website. I will -probably- do it on my own website in the future, kind of "this is my work, I am proud of it, if you want to use it go ahead". Thinking it again, I would do it in Unsplash, if they can assure me one of my pics will be on their book next year. That's something.
Steven Lam
@ingojoseph @busse Most free stock photos do not provide model release for usage because they are not intended to be used for advertising purpose. They are great for comps, light usage like blogging. Free stock images is too risky to use for commercial purpose because the image is not "indemnify" by the stock agency itself which the user may be held liable for if they don't have permission to use from the model(s), the property owner(s) or logos and brand(s) appearing in the image. If you need to use the image for advertising purpose, you will need to purchase "Image Rights" based images from stock agencies like GettyImages, Corbis, ImagesSource, etc. Otherwise, you will need to do the legwork yourself and reach out to all of the parties involved in each and every one of those free stock images and make sure you have cleared all legal usage rights with all parties involved. Which I bet they will ask you for a fee if you're reaching out to them.
Braunson Yager
Pexels looks great. However it would be handy to have a advanced filter/search to filter down photo size, license, etc.
Ingo Joseph
Maker
@braunshizzle It’s called Pexels ;) But thanks for your feedback! We only have one license (https://www.pexels.com/photo-lic...) and you can do whatever you want with our photos. So a license filter is not necessary. And we already have implemented a color search, e.g.: http://www.pexels.com/?s=color%3... And even more filters will follow.
Brent Pepitone
Awesome! Have always enjoyed Pexels!
Tyler Breton
Are you guys going to move into audio/video at some point?
Bruno Joseph
Maker
@tylerbreton We also provide free videos: https://videos.pexels.com/. But audio is not planned yet.
Hasnain Afzal
This is such an excellent resource for photos! If you're a developer this is a must!
Aleksandar
I have been visiting it every day almost a year. Its really great. Thank you for making such useful website. I have one suggestion: Instead of "pexels-photo" for the untitled image name, it would be great if it could have a unique name, since i have to rename them myself. I noticed that the URL has unique id of the image, but its a directory, its not part of the image name. Please consider this, it would make it even better website.
Bruno Joseph
Maker
@aleksandars_ Hi Aleksandar, thanks for your feedback. We will probably change it as you suggested soon.
Matt Blick
Great resource here @3runjo. I've been using unsplash.com and your product has some great options. Keep it up! Have you thought about having search options for color, size, time, etc?
Bruno Joseph
Maker
@mattjblick We already have a color search, e.g.: https://www.pexels.com/search/co... (you can even use hex color codes)
Lynn Fredricks
With Pexels 3.0, what happens if someone violates someone else's copyright and posts an unauthorized image? Is there a way for users to log in and find out if the photo they've been using violates someone else's copyrights?
Pawel Kadysz
@lynnfredricks Exactly. I recently found a premium photo from https://stock.tookapic.com being distributed for free on Pexels.
Lynn Fredricks
@pawelkadysz How do you resolve this problem for users? Here's a possible scenario: - 10,000 people find an awesome picture on your site, download and use it - you get a DMCA takedown notice, and you take it down (hopefully you are checking the claim as well) - You determine to take it down - maybe you find it elsewhere What about the 10,000 people who downloaded the image and area using it? Many users of content distribution sites don't realize that providers are typically able to utilize 'safe harbor' provisions to avoid a serious lawsuit, but do not realize that the end user has no such protection. I would imagine that a value add of, say, registration, would be notification of a change of legal status of an image.
Pawel Kadysz
To be honest, it is so annoying seeing photos orignally posted somewhere else being distributed on Pexels and similar sites. I know it's CC0 license and I know that's what they're allowed to do. But still, everytime I see a photo from https://stock.tookapic.com on Pexels it hurts a bit. That's exactly why we'll probably change the "Free" license on our future photos. I know few sites already did that (kaboompics for example).
roman drits
@pawelkadysz Totally agree with you on this, Pawel. We've also decided to do the same with all the future photos on http://barnimages.com/ A couple free photography aggregators, like Stock Up by Site Builder Report or Librestock, give much more respect to photographers' work, and include a direct link to the original image source.