Article by Adam Johannes

CEO, ChurchInsight

We speak with hundreds of churches about church website designs and very often we give people links to a few sites to help them with their images. These sites offer free stock photos, free online image editing, and free stock videos. Here is a quick blog post to highlight some services out there for you all to be aware of.
 

Freely Photos

This is free stock photo library that focuses on Churches and Christianity. 

Their image library has grown over time and is a very useful resource if you are looking to use any stock photos for your website or printed materials.



You can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos free of charge, including for commercial purposes, without asking permission from, or providing attribution to, the photographer or Freely Photos

Visit Freely Photos


Pexels

Pexels helps designers, bloggers, and everyone who is looking for an image to find great photos that you can use everywhere for free.

All photos uploaded on Pexels are licensed under the Pexels license. This means you can use them free for personal and commercial purposes.



Visit Pexels


Videvo

Videvo offer free stock videos, motion graphics, music and sound effects



Visit Videvo


Snappa

Snappa is a very useful tool that helps you create slides for your slideshows, or adverts for your website. One of the most useful features is that it has a huge amount of free stock photos built in so you do not have to hunt for an image before you start creating your slide or advert.

It's very easy to use... and here is a screenshot of a quick image I used, applied a dark tint and blur, added an icon and finally some text...



Snappa is free for up to 5 image downloads a month, or $10 a month for unlimited downloads. 

Visit Snappa


Pixlr

Need to easily edit your existing photos? The Pixlr image editor is perfect. It's online so you can access it without having to download anything and is completely free to use.

Let's say you find a great image on Freely Photos, but it's too large. Just go to www.pixlr.com/editor open the image and then go to Image > Image size and reduce the size.

It's also great for cropping an original image so you just show the part of the image you want.



I've used Pixlr to edit the sizes of all the images in this blog post!

Visit Pixlr

Free Stock Videos

For sites that use video there are a couple of good options...

Pexels has it's own stock video library.
Coverr also has a good range of free stock videos


So there are some good image sites for you to try out. Feel free to let us know how you get on!