If you’re a web designer, you’re always searching for high-resolution images for your web design projects. Quality stock images that match the overall look and feel of your design can be time-consuming to find. Wouldn’t it be nice to already have a collection of stock images that you can use for client projects?
Completely Free Sources of High Resolution Images
Unsplash is my choice for free images that you may use for personal and commercial projects.
The only problem is some of the images are either too generic, out of sync with the content message or the color palette doesn’t work with the overall design.
Update 2021: The Unsplash library has grown over the years, so you may find what you need without having to purchase images elsewhere.
For example, if you’re building a website for a construction company, you’ll want images that reflect the type of products and services they provide. This is where having a collection of high-resolution images for website projects comes in very handy.
Download 300 High Resolution Images in 30 Days
Here is what I’ve done. I found a plan on BigStockPhoto.com that offers 10 image downloads per day of the highest resolution available for $99/mo. (Current price at the time this post was written)
Each day you may download 10 images. The time you sign up for the plan will be the same time each day that your download balance is replenished. For me, it is around 4 pm. You’ll need to download 10 images every 24 hours to take full advantage of the plan. You might say that’s easy, but things happen and you may find you missed the daily window.
Browse the website often and save your favorites. You can also group favorites in categories for easier sorting. When you are ready to download your 10 images for the day, just visit your saved favorites and add them to your cart.
Tip: Schedule a daily reminder for yourself so you’ll remember to complete the download each day. Don’t remove images you’ve already downloaded from your saved favorites list. When you’re browsing for more images, you can easily see if they are starred and know they are in your favorites. When on the favorites page, you’ll see a re-download link below the images you’ve previously downloaded. The ones without the link are available to add to your cart.
Be sure to read the cancellation terms, at the time of this post, I believe they charge your card about 3 days before the next month’s renewal. Start the cancellation process before that date, or continue for another month and get another 300 images!
Keep Your Images Organized
So that you can find similar images easily on your storage device – group them together by industry, color palette, topic, etc.
Resizing Images for the Web
In my next post, I’ll talk about resizing these images for the web via Photoshop’s Image Processor script. This is a handy feature that can batch process hundreds of images and reduce their file size for a better web experience.
Okay now go make something beautiful to tell your story.
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