When you are in dire need on looking out for public domain images, Google image search is not going to help you much. You might have known few websites where you can download public domain images. But the image that you are looking out for might not be available from the websites you already knew and you ponder over internet wasting lots of your time.

I encounter this scenario frequently as part of my work. I have bookmarked several websites from where I can download public domain/CC0 images. Most of the time I spend in unfruitful searches without good yield. Over course of time I have finally filtered out websites from where one can good quality images from broad categories. The category of image required varies from project to project. So for this reason I have complied set of 7 websites where one can download images. The following are the websites from which you can download CC0/public domain images.

#01 Public domain images search engine

This is a must have website to be bookmarked. Instead of firing one site of after another, Stock Up lets you search 26 high-quality, free stock photo websites in one place. You can find those website’s list here http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/stock-up/about. Since this website aggregates from 26 other websites, I strongly recommend you read the license of the source website before downloading.

#02 Pixabay

Public Domain. This is very popular among graphic designers. This host several good quality images (and very few poor ones too). Most of the time this will serve your purpose.

#03 Pexels

The image quality in this site very good and has large collection of images in various genres.

#04 Skitter Photo

The image quality is good and on every image you download the licensing states that “To the extent possible under law, Skitterphoto has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to (the image you choose)”.

#05 Morgue File

Though this website might look simple, it houses large collection of images and has mix of image qualities and varieties. The license provided is “morgueFile free photo — You are allowed to copy, distribute, transmit the work and to adapt the work. Attribution is not required. You are prohibited from using this work in a stand alone manner.”

#06 FreeImages

This is one more in the queue containing good quality and hosts variety of images. License provided by this is “FreeImages.com Content License License”. This more or less synonymous to public domain license. The licensing terms also quotes that “FreeImages.com may discontinue licensing any item of content at any time in its sole discretion.”

#07 Flickr

Use “No know copyright exists” filter to search for public domain images. This hosts so much of public domain images, which makes your searching time to increase and finalize upon one image. There are large number of contributors to this repository apart from the regular user uploads. The list is mentioned here https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/

Though most site quotes “public domain” / “CC0” or have their own tailored version of public domain license; I would strongly recommend you to read the licensing terms before you download so as to suit your project needs.