5 Platforms to Get Royalty-Free Vectors for Your Commercial Designs

One unappealing picture can ruin a client’s impression of your brand. That’s why professional content creators carefully select visuals for their projects. They usually opt for vector graphics that contain great features for creating user-friendly and appealing designs. Editing vectors allows you to customize projects and reduce their digital weight. Besides, you can avoid quality loss when scaling illustrations for your responsive designs. 

To find suitable royalty-free graphics for your commercial and personal projects, explore stock content marketplaces. These platforms feature affordable, licensed content and advanced tools for seeking needed visuals. Read on to learn more about royalty-free images, their commercial usage terms, and popular stock vector sources. 

What are royalty-free vectors?  

Vector graphics are digital pictures that illustrators manually draw using specialized software. Vector illustrations consist of simple geometrical shapes like lines, curves, and circles. Mathematical formulas state the element location for creating an entire composition. Due to the formulas’ easy adaptation to changes, vectors keep their high quality after scaling and have a small size. This way, you can make responsive multi-screen designs and increase website loading speed. Moreover, you can manipulate these graphics using downloadable or online editors compatible with vector files. 

Creators upload and sell their vector art on stock content marketplaces. Generally, vector graphic stocks distribute their visual content under a royalty-free license. The royalty-free license allows you to buy a vector picture once and use it with minimal to no limitations. You don’t need to pay extra fees for using the image in multiple projects.  

Are royalty-free images allowed for commercial use? 

The royalty-free license allows you to use purchased vector pictures for commercial purposes. You can design visuals for websites, apps, presentations, packaging materials, and advertising banners with royalty-free vector illustrations. When purchasing a paid file, you don’t need to attribute sources and authors, so that’s a preferred condition for enterprises. However, free images might require attribution.

Design and marketing agencies consider royalty-free pictures as they can purchase several illustrations, gather their private thematic collection, and use them for different projects. Moreover, content creators can select vector icon sets and modify them to fit various requirements and visual styles. 

Where to find royalty-free vector images for commercial use 

Usually, users browse free pictures on the internet. However, they frequently face situations where a downloaded vector file turns out to be a raster. Besides, images from public internet sources are generally copyrighted, and you might break the law using them for commercial purposes. You can contact a copyright holder and buy that photo, although it is a complicated and time-consuming process. 

It is recommended to download royalty-free pictures from online stock content platforms for your commercial projects. When legally purchasing licensed images, you don’t need to worry about copyright infringement. Moreover, photo stocks usually offer thematic image collections and advanced search tools to select needed parameters and adjust filters to browse the library. 

What is a stock vector collection? 

Stock platforms offer various curated vector image collections. Generally, thematic collections are dedicated to specific topics like Christmas minimalism, rainy days, Parisian vibes, and many others. You can browse popular themes and gather visuals for your projects, as pictures there are sorted by similar compositions, emotional narratives, and color palettes. Content creators can use thematic collections for creating inspirational mood boards and integral designs. 

Five sources to download stock vector illustrations

#1 Depositphotos

Depositphotos is one of the largest stock content marketplaces offering 54+ million royalty-free vector pictures and illustrations you can explore at https://blog.depositphotos.com/depositphotos-review.html . You can also search for raster images, videos, and music on the platform. The marketplace features carefully selected thematic categories and updated trendy collections, so you can browse visuals that perfectly suit your commercial projects. With advanced search filters, you can sort images by type, date, orientation, contributor, color, origin, and location. Moreover, if you already have a reference picture, the Search by Image tool helps you find similar, licensed pictures you can use for creating eye-catching designs. 

#2 Pixabay 

The platform offers 2.6+ million free royalty-free pictures, videos, and music for commercial usage. You can find inspiration by browsing expert-made photo collections and exploring trending design topics. Pixabay’s curators frequently update the hand-picked Editor’s Choice collection with striking, popular images that you can implement in your projects. When searching for visuals, you can sort results by file type, orientation, size, and color. Additionally, you can explore the artist community and find contributors that create images in your preferred style, or browse the list of all cameras used to capture those photos.

#3 Freepik 

This photobank provides content creators and businesses with 4.5+ million free stock vectors, illustrations, photos, templates, mock-ups, and PSD files. The design community replenishes Freepik’s library every day so that you can find needed pictures for your commercial projects with ease. Explore popular collections and choose among 21 categories, including patterns, icons, silhouettes, and banners to find preferred content files. Note that you must attribute the source before publishing your tasks with free images. 

#4 Vecteezy 

Vecteezy is an online platform that connects pro-skilled contributors and designers worldwide. The marketplace features royalty-free vector images you can freely download for commercial purposes. You can browse Trending Searches, explore vectors by category, and look through thematic collections to find high-quality pictures. Also, Vecteezy offers a Featured Contributors section, where you can find popular creators that might become your favorite. You can purchase a Pro subscription, which allows you to use visuals without attribution and lifts the usage limits. 

#5 Alamy 

This online stock content marketplace offers 290+ million authentic royalty-free and rights-managed pictures presented by international contributors. You can find eye-catching visuals in the Alamy library for creating appealing vector designs. To find inspiring ideas for your projects, browse thematic collections. The platform allows sorting pictures by location, type, and viewpoint. All content files are paid for; you just add images to your cart and purchase them. 

Conclusion 

Without knowing a file’s licensing terms, you can easily break the copyright law when using free internet pictures in your commercial projects. You can avoid such issues by browsing visuals on reliable stock content platforms and buying licensed vector images. The royalty-free license allows you to use vector illustrations for multiple projects, while only paying once. Explore the presented platforms and download striking vectors for your designs.