Web Search for Images
Google Image Search – back in 2010 Google had indexed 10 billion images. Definitely the biggest collection online. Keep in mind that context is king, use keywords that might be found on the same page as the type of image you seek.
Yahoo Image Search / Bing Images - essentially the same service (Bing powers both), second fiddle to Google but still very good.
DuckDuckGo has an image search. Info here.
Flickr has billions of photos, and you can run a search there – although it is indexed by Google and Bing
Reverse Image Search
The main images search services (above) each have a reverse image search - find images that look like the one you provide. Click on the camera icon. Or try these:
TinEye – good reverse image search engine
Image Raider – meta-reverse-image-search – searches Google, Bing and Yandex. Very affordable subscription for regularly looking for copies of your image online.
Karma Decay – searches Reddit.
Google + Pinterest + IconScout + Gettyimages, Unsplash, and AdobeStock
PimEyes is a database of faces, allegedly 3 billion of them (ie every adult online), with 100K searches made daily. Nominally it is a service for your protection, but who knows what its main uses are…
It is subscription-based.
Stock Images – Free for Non-Commercial Use
Free for non-commercial use: FreeFoto, Free Images UK, FreeStockPhotos & PhotoNet
UnSplash is worth a look. Every image is Creative Commons Zero (use for free, no atrribution required), and they are typically suitable for big statement sliders.
Pixabay is also without restrictions, with more images and less artistry.
Stock photography consists of existing photos that can be licensed for certain uses. Customers include book & magzine publishers, ad agencies, tv, movie & documentary makers, web site creators, graphic artists and interior decorators. The use of stock photography instead of hiring a photographer can save time and help keep costs down. Stock photography databases are quick and easy to search, and images can be purchased online.
Stock photography is also known as photo archives, or image banks, and outside the U.S.A. they are often referred to as picture libraries. The phrase photo archive can refer to the website or even physical location where the photographs are stored. Photo archives are also sometimes called image banks.
Stock Images – Paid for Commercial Use
These are often known as Royalty-Free, which means that you pay once for the image, and you can then use it as often as you like.
Dollar Photo Club – every high-res image costs just $1, so when you begin searching you know that any suitable image you find won’t break the bank. $10/mo. to subscribe, includes 10 images per month, allowance rolls over.
Fotosearch Stock Photography - every royalty-free stock photo that there is, available for purchase from the one site. Amazing search engine.
Corbis & iStockPhoto – not cheap, but high quality.
EveryStockPhoto - meta-search engine for creative commons photos, using Flickr, freerangestock, stock.xchng, ImageAfter etc
Inmagine - royalty-free stock photos – search 300,000 images
Pictures Now - search a large collection of digital images – art, illustration & photos
ShutterStock - monthly subscription for huge amount of royalty-free downloads
CanStockPhoto - over 10 million professional royalty free stock photos, from $0.44 each
Clip Art
ClipArt.com is a good place to start.
Clip Art Warehouse - thousands of clip art images, free but they prefer a link to their site
Classroom ClipArt - for school kids. Lots of pop-up ads…
Special Collections
Images Canada - provides central search access to the thousands of images held on the websites of participating Canadian cultural institutions. Images are free for personal use.
Digital New Zealand – 1.3 million images
Australia in Pictures – 200,000 images
Virginia Tech ImageBase - lots of agricultural and civil war pics
NASA and FEMA have their own image archives
NY Public Library - a collection of 30,000 digitized images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923.
…a big directory of similar resources can be found at Photographic Libraries or Wikipedia
Other
- Trek Earth - browse photos within Continents, Countries, Regions, States and Cities