Noupe Editorial Team April 24th, 2017

Burst and Freephotos.cc: Two New Providers of Free Photos

Although there's a large market with suppliers of free photos, newcomers are always welcome. First, because you can never have enough image material as it is. Second, the topical variety can always use some reinforcements, even with that many providers. Especially Burst is very convincing here.

Burst: Free Photos From the Shopify Makers

You can tell that the new service Burst originates from the house of Shopify simply by looking at the URL. Burst is being operated as a subdomain under burst.shopify.com. Shopify is an e-commerce platform for everyone, which already boasts more than 350,000 shop providers. Burst is an expanded content marketing approach, where the e-commerce experts provide high-quality photo material for free under the Creative Commons Zero license, which can be compared to the public domain. Here, they are very careful, and thus, they are not the tenth clone of the third photo service. The images on Burst are different from the ones we can find on other platforms in various, similar perspectives, regarding the topic, as well as their design. Shopify values professional quality. Images are added weekly. If you want to be kept updated on new image material, you could subscribe to the email newsletter. However, neither that nor any other type of registration is required. If you find an image you like, you can download it right away. The photos on Burst come in resolutions of 13 megapixels. At least, this was the default resolution during my test. Thus, the material is also suitable for print projects, as long as it's not used for billboards and other large formats.

How to Find the Right Image

Accessing the photos can be done in multiple ways. For one, you could scroll through the images sorted by currentness directly from the landing page. A pagination at the page's bottom end also allows you to browse through the photo grid. Shopify doesn't use lazy loading. Personally, I like that, as I simply prefer a page-based structure. On top of that, most photo pages using it do load lazily, in the sense of slow, which would most likely annoy the majority of web users. Another way to find the desired image is the free text search function. Here, the system searches the image catalog for previously entered tags. A mix of name fragments and different tags results in no result being found. This means that the search function isn't all that smart. If you like an image, it is likely that you will enjoy similar images as well. Here, it's useful that the pictures are tagged, as the used tags are clickable, allowing you to generate another list of results. The last way to go through the images is ready-made collections by Shopify, called "Popular Collections." Here, you'll find all images that can clearly be assigned to one particular topic, such as yoga, coffee, breakfast, baby, etc. Clicking on a photo within the grid overview makes the site switch into a detail view, allowing you to immediately download the respective image. Here, you also get to see which photographer deserves your thanks. The link to the license conditions always leads to this default page, which shows the service's general service conditions. [caption id="attachment_102036" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Burst: Detail View of an Individual Photo. (Screenshot: Noupe)[/caption] Aside from image material, Burst also offers business ideas, as well as short guides to their realization. For example, this can teach you how to sell coffee using the world wide web. Burst comes with the fitting image material for your respective online shop as it is. Overall, Burst is an enrichment for your collection of free photo providers and should become part of your bookmark collection.

Freephotos.cc: Photo Tap Integrates Different Suppliers

Freephotos.cc is more of a central access point for the offers of different providers of free photos than a provider of free pictures. Savvy? Freephotos.cc uses the APIs of existing services, like Unsplash or Pexels, to access their supply, and accumulates them on its platform. Here, you get to access the image supply either by using an infinitely scrolling landing page, which constantly fills the grid while scrolling or by using a free text search. [caption id="attachment_102037" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Freephotos.cc: Central Starting Point for Multiple Services. (Screenshot: Noupe)[/caption] Freephotos.cc doesn't have detail pages like Burst does. A click on an image in the grid makes the site display a larger version of the image. While hovering, a download button appears, also allowing you to download it immediately, without having to switch to the full-size view first. You won't find any tags or other categorizations. The operator states, that all photos are under the Creative Commons Zero license, allowing you to use them completely for free, for any purpose. I recommend checking the license for every single image, though. Typically, this does not take a lot of effort, as a click on the download button takes you to the respective image's original page on the according source service as it is. There, you can make sure which guidelines you need to follow. Freephotos.cc is not a must have. Nonetheless, it can be useful to have it in your portfolio for a large-scale image search. It's worth taking a look at either way. Featured image by StockSnap on Pixabay

Noupe Editorial Team

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