Stock Images

Licensing

Although many sites allow you to download and use pictures, make sure to read their policy regarding the said image. Not giving credit to a photographer when it's explicitly mentioned is not only morally wrong but can also cause legal issues. CreativeCommons is the best place to learn more about licensing, and they even have a library of pictures that you can use under the CC license.

Get images from free sources

There are a lot of resources that provide images for free, what's important is that these are legal as well. Let's go through some of these resources!

Unsplash

Unsplash has thousands of high resolution images divided into different categories for easier navigation. What's even more amazing is that Unsplash has plugins for most of the major design tools so adding images to your design files is even more easier.

Pexels

Pexels is another extensive free library of photos and videos; you will be surprised by the fantastic images you can find over there.

Brust

Brust is another cool stock photo library where you can find free photos for commercial use.

LibreStock

LibreStock is like a library of libraries. It indexes different stock sites and searches for images between different sites.

StockSnap

StockSnap is a place where you can find HD images in different categories; like nature, business, people and so on.

Pixabay

Pixabay gives you access to a wide variety of royalty free stock images, illustrations, videos and music.

Gratisography

Compared to other sites, pictures found on Gratisography are quirky and more unique. New photos are added constantly and you can download as many pictures as you'd like.

Refe

Like Unsplash, Refe also has a lot of high resolution images divided into categories which you can download directly from their website. Additionally, if you've clicked some cool photographs, you can sell those here.

Foodie's Feed

If you're looking for high resolution images of food, Foodie's Feed is perfect for you. They've more than 1600 free pictures for you to choose from and download.

Picography

Picography gives you access to numerous high resolution pictures divided in different categories that you an use for free in your application.

How to add multiple avatars with the Unsplash plugin

In the excercise file you will notice that we have multiple round shapes without any image. And this is very common when you are creating different UIs. For this case, there are some shortcuts you can use to make your work more efficient.

The first thing we will do is install the Unsplash plugin. We will use Figma for this excersice. Let’s go to community and in the search field, type Unsplash and install the plugin.

Next, select all the round shapes you'd like to populate with images using the Unsplash plugin.

Head to the tab bar, select Plugins and click on Unsplash. A pop up will show up with various options.

From the pop up, you can select different types of images according to the context of your UI. In our case, we want to add some avatars so we will choose portrait.

Once we run the plugin, we will see that our round shapes will be filled with random people's faces. This plugin is really a life savior and you can use it in different cases.

Conclusion

Images are a great visual addition to any application. Make sure to choose images that fit well with your overall aesthetic. Also, ensure that you don't use images that are way too large and big in size.