Unsplash is a website that puts up 10 new high-resolution pictures every 10 days.

So what’s the big deal about it? Sounds like a tumblr-ish website, right? Not at all.

The big deal about it is that every picture that is shown on Unsplash is royalty free. Yes, you can freely use any of these pictures. 

 How does Unsplash work? It’s very easy. A photographer makes an account and uploads his picture to the website, donating it this way and if the picture is selected it will get shown on it.

Then, any person or web designer that needs a picture from it can easily download it in full high-resolution without any tricks.

Unsplash gives credit where is due, alongside the picture you can see who took it and even though, you don’t need to give credit when using it, it’s always good to know who was behind the picture you liked.

Unsplash is a side-project by Crew, a website of freelance designers and developers that offers a wide range of services from websites, apps, illustrations and more.

Unsplash came to life when the team behind Crew needed a few pictures for their website and they were not pleased with the price or quality of the photography options they had.

So, they decided to hire a photographer and take a few pictures at a coffee shop.

They thought they wouldn’t be the only ones with the same problem so why not put the extra pictures online and give them for free? 

They made a tumblr, called it Unsplash, put 10 of their best extra pictures and a link back to their homepage, and then shared the link on the HackerNews community.

That’s how everything started.

The fact that they were giving away royalty free high-resolution pictures not only gave lots of traffic to the page but to the Crew main website and brought them lots of customers, and even gave more exposure to the photographer, who received lots of visits on his portfolio site.

The Crew team though right, they weren’t the only ones with that kind of problem.

When you’re a web builder you can’t just go around using pictures you found while doing a search on Google Images.

Actually, even if you’re not a web builder you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t make profit out of something that isn’t even yours.

This is why a website like Unsplash has been so popular since the very beginning.

It has made lots of people’s job easier and not only their jobs, I’m sure there are many out there that just use the pictures for fun, as a desktop wallpaper or maybe as a cool picture on Instagram.

Why should I photographer just give away for free his picture while there are people out there willing to pay for it?

Well, if you have been reading this article you should already know the answer.

Having a picture on Unsplash will give him lots of exposure to his work that could potentially lead to much more income that just outright selling the picture.

However,it is not always easy to get the very perfect picture you want for your site. But there is always a way out, as long as you visit Unsplash.com

It’s great that web builders have at their disposition royalty free high- resolution pictures that they can copy, modify, distribute and use them for commercial purposes or not.

Not every web designer has access to a photographer or the money to purchase the pictures they need to use on their job.

So, a website like Unsplash is also a good opportunity for someone starting in the business.

How frustrating would it be having the talent but not the tools, or in this case, the images to starting to work? 

Not only that, people’s eyes will always be attracted and amazed by a picture with a great quality.

No matter how good the service or the product is, if the picture used to promote it, is not good or has a crappy quality, no one would be interested on it

This applies to websites to, you would want to visit a web that has a good image, a simple but elegant design and contains great pictures.

If you have read until this point of the article, you must be having the information you need, on how to access some free pictures, right?

What are you waiting for? Visit Unsplash, it’s free.

blog comments powered by Disqus