For many artists and designers looking for stock photo’s or textures, premium sites like iStock or Fotolia can be too expensive, especially if you’re just experimenting, or not looking to profit.

Luckily there are some great resources out there that provide high quality stock photo’s and textures license-free, and free-of-charge.

Check out this list for some of the best websites that provide free and extensive stock resources.

1. deviantART

Choosing the ‘Resources and Stock Images’ category in deviantART opens the door to a flood of great quality, high resolution stock. It’s fantastic for finding model photo’s, and even Photoshop brushes and textures.

2. Stock.xchng

Stock.xchng features an ever growing library of completely free and great quality stock photos.

3. flickr

Flickr has a huge amount of stock photos uploaded by professional and amateur photographers, all you need to do is check the ‘Creative Commons’ box in the advanced search options.

4. CG Textures

CG Textures is great if you’re looking for high quality textures for photo manipulations. They have a very extensive selection of free stock, from skies to buildings, and even animals and fur.

5. Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons contains millions of public domain photos with a broad variety of categories, and they don’t cost a penny.