It was founded in 2012 by two friends (Mikael Cho and Luke Chesser) who wanted to make it easy for people to find great images on the internet.
The site has over 1 million registered users and close to 100 million downloads each month. In this article, we’ll tell you what Unsplash is and what it is used for.
How Does Unsplash Work?
When you visit Unsplash, you can search through their database of high-quality photos or use their advanced image filters to narrow down your results. You can also filter by type of media (e.g., “photos”) and size. They also have many types of images for use with commercial and non-commercial purposes available.
Once you have found an image you like, click on the button that says “Download” and then choose between downloading the original file or using one of their many sizes.
If you are looking for something specific, you can also add keywords to help others with similar searches. They also have an Unsplash app to access their creative platform and for mobile freedom in selecting the right image from their curated photo collections.
Unsplash has a business model and makes money largely through advertisements, sponsorships, and affiliate commissions for paid image subscriptions or purchases. from commercial stock photography sites. So essentially, Unsplash makes money from users that buy from advertised affiliates or from clicked-on ads for non-competing services.
Why Use Unsplash?
There are so many reasons why you should be using Unsplash instead of other stock photography sites. Here are just some of them:
There are no membership fees or hidden costs. All the photos on Unsplash are available for anyone to download without any restrictions, which means free images! Unsplash users can find new favorite images for free or discover the perfect photo for a very specific need without too much fuss.
They all come directly from professional photographers and designers who want to share their work. They have a pretty large network and community of photographers and illustrators providing work to users on the site.
Unsplash doesn’t sell these photos to stock agencies or resell them to other websites, and are of high quality.
They’re also licensed under creative commons, which allows you to reuse photos for commercial purposes as long as the photographer is credited.
Many of the photographers are already on Unsplash, upload new photos every day, and are always ready to help the community.
There are no download limits, and Unsplash provides excellent customer service through email and live chat and offers paid support if you need more assistance.
It’s easy to navigate, you only have to enter a keyword into the search bar, and it works across all devices.
Unsplash has ensured they have a responsive design that will work on whichever device you’re working on.
You don’t have to worry about security either, with SSL encryption technology used to keep your information safe.
If you need Unsplash for anything specific, you can customize tabs to suit your needs, like changing the default tab from “Photos” to “Videos”. So whether you are looking for stock photographs or stock videos, it’s an easy way to get professional visuals.
You can use photos or images within mobile apps, blog posts, video projects, landing pages, and in many more ways. Content creators rejoice! Sometimes creating the right content requires aesthetics that some may not produce themselves, and with a burgeoning creator economy – and this is a powerful tool to have in the tool chest.
Unsplash is also integrated with popular social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Many elect to use the images from Unsplash for social media platforms for posts.
Best of all, if you’re using WordPress, you can install the Unsplash plugin on WordPress right away to use the free images from their inventory.
Should You Use Unsplash Photos On Your Website?
Unsplash is an incredible resource for free stock images. They have high-resolution images and photos ready for many topics that are common or interesting. However, they don’t always provide enough details about the photos or images. So while you can download and use the photos for free, there are terms and usage licensing elements that you’d benefit from being aware of as part of the agreement for use.
If you are going to use a picture from Unsplash on your blog or website, make sure that you read the license agreement carefully. Similar services and websites typically provide licenses that are more confusing and more stringent with regard to the photo or image uses allowed. For example, sites like Getty Images and Adobe Stock provide high-resolution photos for a fee, which is tied to a license that indicates how many times you can use the image, what mediums, etc – and the usage can be very expensive!
It is also important to note that Unsplash is one of the most popular websites in the category, so it can be a strong possibility that many other projects include the free stock photo or image you use as well, making it less unique – especially over time. This tends to be the point when people consider purchasing images/photos that are less popular or used across the internet.
Make sure that you understand what you can and cannot do with the image. Also, make sure that you know whether the photo is suitable for commercial use in your creative projects. It may also stand in some cases that use on a blog versus social networks may have different provisions or requests from their authors.
If you are unsure about something, contact the photographer who uploaded the photo.
If you decide to use a photo from Unsplash on a commercial project, please link back to the original source, and mention Unsplash in your article.
How To Use Unsplash Photos In Your Posts And Pages
Now that we have discussed how you can use Unsplash photos on your website, let’s talk about how you can use them in your blog posts and website pages.
You can include a direct link to a specific photo. Next, you can specify the size of the photo. To do that, you can either use the width and height attributes.
Or, you can use CSS media queries to change the dimensions of the image based on the screen resolution of the device that the user is viewing it on.
Unsplash photos can be used as backgrounds for your web pages, and you can use Unsplash photos as featured images.
Each CMS or web management platform will have different steps and options, but they should be rather intuitive in most cases.
Are Unsplash Images Really Free?
All the photos on Unsplash are completely free. There are no restrictions on how you can use them.
In fact, you can use them for any purpose without having to pay anything. As long as you give credit where it’s due, you should be fine.
However, there are some things that you must consider before using a photo from Unsplash on your website or in blog posts. First, you may want to check the licensing terms associated with each photo.
Some photographers require you to purchase a subscription to access their content. Others may ask you to sign up for a trial period before giving you full access to their content. Read the terms carefully.
Second, you may want to double-check the copyright information associated with each photo. Many photographers add this information to their images after uploading them to Unsplash.
This means that you will need to find out which photographer owns the rights to the photo.
Finally, you may want to ensure that the photo is actually available for use. Sometimes, photographers remove certain photos from Unsplash because they feel that they are being misused.
They may even take down entire albums of photos if they believe that someone is abusing their content.
Can I use Unsplash photos as part of a product to sell?
There are several companies that make money by selling products using Unsplash photos.
These companies usually provide a simple tool where you can select a photo from Unsplash and then add some text to describe the product.
When you complete the form, you’ll be redirected to a shopping cart where you can purchase the product.
Releases and Trademarks
If you plan on making money by selling products using Unsplash photos, you should know that you cannot use any of those photos without permission.
This includes both the photos themselves and the names of the companies that created them. Unsplash licensing pretty much comes down to the photographer and their specific provisions on a photo-by-photo basis (unless otherwise noted as collection-wide).
If you plan on releasing an app or software that uses Unsplash photos, the terms of service will likely require that you obtain permission before doing so.
Finally, if you plan on using Unsplash photos in a trademark, you must first register the trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
After you file the application, you’ll receive a certificate that proves that you have legal ownership rights to the mark.
Unsplash For Brands
You can also use Unsplash for Brands. You can create a custom page template for your brand. Then, you can upload your logo and other branding elements to the template.
Once you’ve done that, you can easily replace the text with your company name. You can then share these templates with clients so that they can use them on their own websites.
The best part about this approach is that you only need to pay once for all the custom templates that you create. The rest of the time, you can just reuse the same template over and over again.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand how you can use Unsplash photos on your website and in your blog posts. As you can determine, Unsplash offers free photos and other works that are nicely curated and easy to search for in their database. From a photographer’s standpoint, the site also offers nice exposure to their work, allowing them to upload to Unsplash without limits and to place their work on Unsplash for users to find images for non-commercial purposes and commercial as well in some cases. The Unsplash community is vibrant, from contributors to active users who download images and photos for projects.
We encourage you to visit the Unsplash website and explore the wide variety of high-quality photos that are available.
Hi, I’m Katie Dawson and I am a perfectionist when it comes to sourcing content for my online platform.
There is so little information out there on how to find free-to-use content as well, so I used to sit there for hours scrolling through host domains trying to find the perfect image that suited my idea, but that was free to use.
There’s nothing worse that finding the perfect image or video - before finding out that it can’t be redistributed! For this reason, I have created Cmizer. I want to help everyone out there currently working overtime to get their website up and running by making the job a little easier.
