Great quality images, graphics, and video are integral to eLearning. Well-chosen visuals can improve the overall design, look and feel of an online course. But perhaps more importantly, they can help learners to relate to content, to break down more complex ideas and to improve knowledge retention.

Sourcing high-quality assets for eLearning can be a challenge, especially when many stock photo sites may not align with your budget.

When it comes to choosing assets for your online training course, navigating copyright issues and knowing what images and videos you can and cannot use can be confusing. If you are downloading images from a stock site, it is always a good idea to check out licence agreements to be sure your use of media is in line with the licence terms.

Fortunately, there several free sites where you can source high-quality, royalty-free images, graphics, and video to slot seamlessly into your next eLearning project. Apart from being free and having tons of media to choose from, one of the best things about most of these sites is that they have what is called a CC0 or Creative Commons Zero licence. This licence means you can use and edit these images freely, without consent or attribution of the creator in both commercial and non-commercial projects.

To help you along your way to designing great eLearning, we have compiled a list of our top 5 sites for sourcing free images and video.

Unsplash

With a contributing community of creatives all over the world, Unsplash has over 2 million high-resolution, hand-selected images for you to freely download and use in your eLearning course. Unsplash is easily searchable and organised by topic, making finding the right photo or video for your eLearning project almost effortless. Although certainly not a requirement, attribution or crediting the photo author is appreciated and can be a nice way to help promote a photographer’s work.

Read the Unsplash licence agreement.

Pexels

Pexels has a mission of “Empowering Creators”, offering hundreds of thousands of free stock photos and videos, with new media added daily. Photos and videos are tagged well and are easily searchable making it easy to source the media you need for your next eLearning design project. You can even use the ‘Discover’ function to find photos and videos by categories such as colour, topic, trending, and more.

Read the Pexels licence agreement.

Pixabay

Similar to Unsplash and Pexels, Pixabay’s searchable interface offers over 2.3 million stock images, vector graphics, illustrations, videos, and even music. Pixabay is also powered by a community of photographers, videographers, and creatives who share a great selection of royalty and copyright-free images on the site. Free for anyone to download, Pixabay’s assets are safe to use freely in your online course design, even for commercial projects.

Read the Pixabay licence agreement.

Reshot

Although perhaps not as well-known as the others on this list, Reshot is not only home to a great selection of royalty-free photos and illustrations but also a diverse library of 40,000 icons, perfect for use in eLearning design. Icons can be downloaded in SVG, PNG, and even vector format. With instant downloads, no sign-up required and no need to worry about copyright or attribution, Reshot is a great option for sourcing unique eLearning assets.

Read the Reshot licence agreement.

StockSnap.io

StockSnap.io features hundreds of high-resolution images with new photos added every week, all under the CC0 licence and free for use in your online courses. StockSnap.io images are handpicked and include many beautiful and unique photos you might not see elsewhere making it a good place to source more niche or difficult-to-find images for your eLearning design. 

Read the StockSnap licence agreement.

Knowing where to source high quality stock images and video and having these sites in your toolbox is a valuable way to save time, money and resources when developing online training. If you are thinking of developing eLearning or looking for more ways to reduce your eLearning course development time, why not check out our re-usable eLearning template. Our years of experience in building highly engaging and interactive eLearning courses have enabled us to develop an Articulate Storyline Template designed to help you develop consistent, highly interactive eLearning.