For web designers and bloggers, photos and illustrations are essential for a good website. Images provide the appeal that texts cannot provide. A good website needs a good balance of texts and images in able to fully convey the artistic and literary expression of the creator. Because of this, they constantly seek for fresh cheap stock photos online every time they plan on posting fresh content.

But why settle for cheap stock photos while you can just grab photos without paying? For starters, the best reason for this is due to copyright laws. Copyright is a form of protection that gives original content providers their rights as original creators.  All forms of images are automatically protected by copyright laws immediately after their creation. If you own a blog, website, or plan to use images as part of your business projects, you should always keep this in mind to avoid legal repercussions.

In order to get cheap stock photos, you will need a good list of websites that offer them.

The following is a list of websites that provide interesting content and cheap stock photos:

• Morgue File – provides not only cheap stock photos but also free images. The integration of a social-media like feature makes a refreshing experience for those who’ve been into a lot of stock photo sites that are solely into selling content. Users can interact in an image by liking and commenting on it – just like how you could do it in Facebook. You can also share the image via popular social media sites.

• Every Stock Photo – has a neat feature that allows the registered user to save a collection of the images obtained. It’s also equipped with advanced search tools that could help sort and narrow your search results. And like most websites, they also have a safe search filter.

• Bigstock – offers a monthly royalty-free subscription. It provides one image per month free trial that allows the download of any one image or vector of any size to entice potential members. If that’s not enough, there’s also a 7-day free trial that allows the download of 5 royalty-free photos per day for 7 days. Big Stock also offers one of the cheapest monthly subscriptions out there. With offers like these, this is one of the sites too good to pass up.

• Master File – has a reverse image search feature that allows the checking of the site if it has the same image as the one provided by the user by uploading a sample. This is a great feature for those who have a low resolution image and want to have a higher resolution version.

Several original content providers allow free use of their work but it all depends on what kind of license or rights they want to waive in order to allow other users to use it. It is also a part of professional ethics to give due credit to their works even if the creators themselves forgot or failed to mention asking for credit. In order to avoid setbacks caused by such technicalities, it’s more convenient to purchase cheap stock photos from website that provide them.