How to choose the best royalty-free photos and stock videos for your project

It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. And indeed, we can convey message and emotion through lights, colour and images.

Pictures are the symbol of our memory, imagination and creativity; they connect immediately with our emotions, memories and aspirations. We join someone’s memories through their picture, we can make our writing powerful through suitable images, and we can also create a powerful business proposal with the help of self-explaining images.

But the problem is where to find the perfect images free of charge. That’s where royalty-free photos and stock videos come in. Find out how to choose the best ones for your project.

Select and edit an image of your choice

Royalty-free image platforms like depositphotos.com offer a carefully selected range of images and videos that can add illustration, feeling and meaning to website, blogs, and professional or personal writing.

Whatever the subject, just type your search terms into the search bar, and you can choose from a range of royalty-free images you can download. Once you download it, you can resize it, adjust the settings and even upload to online design tools to edit as you wish and make your own.  

Switch off and relax with calming images

The ocean floor, sea animals, beaches, having fun with sea waves, all these images create the feeling of calmness and help you feel more relaxed. But you may not have the time or budget to escape to the seaside to unwind.

Luckily you don’t need to. Because studies show that just looking at pictures of nature can help to reduce your stress levels. Looking at relaxing imagery is considered a form of mindfulness meditation which can help to activate your parasympathetic system.

The parasympathetic system is part of our nervous system that helps us to relax and calm the areas of our brain that are related to fear and anxiety.

So if you’re feeling stressed, just go to a royalty-free photo site and search for images that you find calming. You can then download these to use for wallpaper on your devices and even print out to place around your home and office to help reduce feelings of anxiety. Or if you want your project to help relax people, then you know which images to choose.

Choose natural-looking images for your marketing

Nothing looks less authentic than cheesy, posed shots with beautiful models. Today, marketing has moved onto more natural-looking images that people can relate to. There are no forced smiles, instead the trend is for more reportage-style photos that look like they were taken in a real office or home, with ‘normal’ looking every day people.

And that’s exactly what you’ll find on royalty-free image sites. You can also search for specific genders, ages, ethnicities and even the number of people in an image. You can also find the appropriate background for your campaign. So if you want to promote clean oceans then select an image from the photo library, add beautiful sunshine, colourful sea creatures and a calming atmosphere with a happy and laughing family. 

Use images to be creative 

You can slo use images as part of the design of your website or web pages. Use ocean floor, sea creatures, underwater, deep-sea or lake images as the background of your website. Just type the keyword in the search bar of of a royalty-free site like Deposit Photos and you can select the desired image.

Use filters to select the colour of your preference and here you go with ready to use images. Make sure you use the colour according to your company logo to make your design more professional and cohesive. You can find images for everything from your company website and marketing materials, to a wedding card, a Facebook post, an Instagram story or even a video competition.