Top 7 Places to Find PowerPoint Stock Images (Free & Paid)
Written by co-founder Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist.
Using images on your presentation helps in keeping your audience engaged and interested.
A lot of people use images strategically to make their presentation even more dramatic, effective, and memorable.
But it doesn’t mean you can just pull out images from doing a Google search. You have to use resources that will allow you to use stock or even royalty-free images.
In this article, you’ll learn of the top 7 places to find stock images for your PowerPoint presentation.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoLet’s get started right away!
Table of Content
Unsplash
Unsplash is one of the most popular places to find totally free stock images. It has more than 200,000 contributing photographers with a library of more than 2 million photos.
Unlike other big repositories of stock images online, Unsplash doesn’t have any upsells. There’s no “premium” account to make to get access to more stock images.
However, you are encouraged to credit the photographer by including a caption that mentions the name of the photographer. (Also, they make this process totally easy.)
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoWhen downloading an image, you can usually select from four sizes — small, medium, large, or the original size. All the images on Unsplash are in ultra-high-definition.
Pexels
Another one that’s similar to Unsplash is Pexels — albeit with a smaller photo library. There’s also no “premium” accounts here so everything is free.
When searching for an image, Pexels would allow you to filter by orientation, size, and color. This saves you time especially if your presentation follows some sort of a theme.
Although there are no paid plans on Pexels, you can donate to certain photographers if you like. Since Pexels is community-powered, donations go a long way to encourage more uploads.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoAside from images, you can also download stock videos on Pexels for free. Both the photos and videos are high definition.
Freepik
If you like to use vector images and icons in addition to stock photos, you would definitely love Freepik. There are even PSD files here which you could edit on your own using Photoshop.
Freepik has around 1.4 million of these images and files you can download. However, if you’re not on a premium plan, you have to include attribution whenever you use a file from their library.
Although there are hundreds of thousands of free resources, becoming a premium member has its perks since you get access to even more premium vectors, images, and PSD files.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoFreepik’s premium membership costs 9.99 euros per month — cheaper when you pay yearly for 89.99 euros.
Burst
The next one is Burst, which is powered by Shopify and is specifically build for designers, developers, bloggers, and entrepreneurs who need beautiful photography.
Burst, when compared to the previous ones mentioned above, is a bit smaller with only thousands of royalty-free images on its library.
The good news is that everything on Burst is free. All images are available for download, for free, in either high resolution or low resolution.
You could also look at their collection of images per theme or category. Super helpful for presentations following certain, popular topics.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoPixabay
Another awesome place to find PowerPoint stock images is Pixabay. Although not as big as Unsplash, Pixabay has a whopping 1.8 million-plus image library.
Similar to Freepik and Pexels, Pixabay — in addition to images — also has free videos, vectors, and illustrations you can download.
When searching on Pixabay, you can filter the results by the type of file (image or video), orientation, category, size, and even color.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoThankfully, Pixabay is totally free to download. Most images also don’t require attribution.
Pikwizard
Pikwizard is the new kid in stock resources town. But that didn’t stop them from getting people to come over to their site and download their images.
Although they’re quite new, they already have 30,000 completely free images ready to be downloaded — 5,000 of them are exclusive only on Pikwizard.
Some of their images are labeled “premium” which are actually from Adobe Stock.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoImages on Pikwizard puts a lot of focus on people. If you try searching for an image there, you will find that most of the images have a person in it.
Shutterstock
This list wouldn’t end without Shutterstock in it. On this list, Shutterstock has the biggest library of images — with over 200 million of photos, vectors, and illustrations.
There are also around 10 million video clips and music tracks available for licensing.
Although Shutterstock doesn’t have a free account, they have a free trial which will give you access to their full library of images.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoSubscriptions on this platform starts at $49 per month with only 10 images. If you need more images, you have to pay more.
Wrapping things up…
Stock photos are a great way to add spice and color to your presentation. You can use them as background or even as a way to get a point across.
Unfortunately, you simply can’t get any image you like on the internet. There are legal ramifications for doing that.
Using the resources on this guide is the way to do that. Although there are a lot of places you can find and download stock images, the 7 listed here are the top ones you should check out.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of Spreadsheeto