Free Image Sites Photo Editing Software and Digital Camera Tips
One of the hardest things when putting together a website is the design. More specifically it is finding photos to use on your site. Now you can spend a lot of time going here and there looking for photographs or you can see our quick guide to places you can find free photos.
Get Quality Photos at These Free Image Sites.
Or you can do what we suggest, which is to make sure you take photos of everything and everywhere you go. This way you will have a cache of photos you can choose from and share with others.
But what if you have a site like the Online Business Reef where you are using photos that you probably cant take yourself? Well it is best to find photos from the great sources below or if you are in a position to purchase them I would do that for images that you need only to make an impact with.
FREE PHOTO SITES:
The Morgue File – a combination of free photos and photos for a small fee. This has quite a few photos you can get for free in various genres.
Foter – a great searchable site that allows you to enter a search term to find a photo you want. When you find the photo you like it even provides you with the correct attribution text to make sure you correctly give credit.
Creative Commons Search – this is not a free site of photos but a search site that will look for photos, music, video, and clip art from a variety of sources. You just need to make sure you verify the CC license to make sure you can use it.
Flickr – has billions of photos that are searchable and have the license clearly located on each photo so you can see how you are able to use them. There are a lot of high quality images as well.
Open Clip Art – is a great place to all kinds of clip art that you can use freely.
Wiki Media Commons – a site where you can find freely usable media. You can also contribute media as well.
Dreamstime – is a photo site that has a lot of nice images. The downside is you can only download up to 10 images for free and then you will need to purchase a plan or refer someone else to the site to get 10 more images. So make sure you choose wisely.
Pixabay – is a cool site with a ton of pictures and you can look for ones in the public domain you can use freely. There are quite a few to choose from and they are high quality.
These are the ones we use here at the Online Business Reef but I am sure there are many more. If you have another good suggestion of a free image site please feel free to leave it in the comment section.
FREE PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE:
GIMP – is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. This is usually the best choice due to you being able to install and work from your desktop.
PAINT.NET – is another free image software that runs on Windows. It is kind of a beefed up Paint program so a lot of die hard Windows fans like it. It has less of a learning curve then Gimp and also runs on the desktop.
FOTOFLEXR – the worlds most advanced online image editor, helps you create dazzling photo effects for free in your browser.
FOTOR – free online photo editor, online photo editing & photo creatives made simple and fun.
PICMONKEY – from the makers of Picnik this is another online photo em-betterment site.
PICASA – this is a Google product so if you are big into using a lot of Google products then this will be great for you. But it is kind of clunky when using the organization side of things. But it integrates well with other Google products, especially Google+
PIXLR – from Autodesk is another express mobile and online photo editor.
There are two types of programs we mention here. One runs on the desktop on your computer and does not require an internet connection. The others are online programs where you have to upload photos to work on them.
If you are going to do a lot of image editing we recommend you learn GIMP and use that. It will be hard to learn at first but in the end you will save a ton of time, money, and your efforts will be rewarded with great photos.
TIPS FOR TAKING GREAT PHOTOS:
Get a great Camera – if you have a good camera it makes taking photos a lot easier. It is hard to take great high quality photos with your smart phone or a $100 digital camera. It is not impossible as we use a lot of photos taken from these convenient cameras but a good camera will help when you are in situations you can use them.
Know how to use the camera settings – get a basic idea of how to use the cameras settings. Especially the flash, photo settings like portrait, landscape, and macro. A more advanced camera will have exposure settings, manual options, and light settings. These also should be learned.
Keep a steady hand – probably one of the best tips you can learn is to keep your hand as still as possible to make sure your photo is crystal clear. Brace your arm if you need to, but do what you can to make sure you are steady.
Make it handy fast – one tip to taking great pictures is to make sure you camera is ready in an instant. Very often photo opportunities come up when you least expect them and if you know and understand how to access your camera quickly you can make sure you get the shot. We almost all have phones in our cameras so know how to access it quickly for those quick shots.
Keep the sun behind you – make sure if you are photographing outdoors you keep the sun in back of you.
Check, check, and recheck – the beautiful thing about today’s digital cameras is you can look at the picture to make sure you have the perfect shot. So always do a quick check if you can and retake in necessary.
Shoot em up Style – the other great thing about digital photography is you can take a lot of photos. This is good if you cant check photos. So take as many as you want and then take some more. You can always delete them later. In many cases I have found some hidden gems while doing this.
Machine gun style photo taking tips – here are the rapid tips; get outside, subjects off-center, unusual angles, fill the frame, show emotion, and capture the candid.
Remember to take good photographs you need to at the very least have a camera ready. Ready to capture that photo that can be gone in an instant.
So my one tip for you is to practice taking fast photos of anything and everything and it will be much easier when you actually need to take that important one.
