Best Stock Image Apps
Want to boost your creativity with eye-catching stock images, videos, and designs? These apps and tools are some of our favorites to do just that.
One of the frustrating things about designing original content is the non-stop search for good ideas and locating tools that provide quality images and videos.
Popular brands spend significant time designing and editing their images or videos -- just like you do when planning your content. So finding a way to create eye-catching designs that pop and demand attention is paramount.
While some stock resources can be expensive, others are incredibly affordable, especially for everything they offer. You also want to ensure you get the most bang for your buck. That's why we're always looking for stock image and video tools that offer more than just a one-dimensional resource.
We'll give you five ideas to get high-quality, creative stock images, photos, templates, mock-ups, and more. We've used all of these and still do.
Canva
Price: Free for the standard version
Pro: $119.99/year or about $9.90/month.
Canva is one of those stock image app resources that offers so much for the price. $119 per year may seem steep to many people, but when you consider everything it provides, Canva is a steal.
Canva is a big-time steal.
Why is Canva a steal? Well, think about what you get and how much easier Canva will make your life. Believe it or not, most people aren't top-notch graphic designers. In the past, you would usually have to hire a graphic designer or learn Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. With technology, however, you no longer need to do that.
And that's one of the special tools Canva provides, the ability to create custom and personalized designs without having to learn a tool like Photoshop.
You can be a professional graphic designer (almost) with just a few clicks and drop and drags. Canva makes it easy with their pre-made templates, too. Just choose a template and customize it to make it your own.
Canva offers so many helpful tools that we can't describe them all here, but some of our favorites are:
- Marketing templates
- Video templates
- Social media templates and pre-made designs
- Presentation templates
- Print marketing features
Freepik
Price: $144/year or $12/month
Freekpik is another tool we couldn't live without. This resource is especially helpful if you do use Photoshop or Illustrator but aren't quite an expert yet.
Why?
Frepik also offers templates, but not just any templates. They provide PSD templates to incorporate into your Photoshop files easily. This takes a lot of work out of your design process.
In addition, Freepik also includes vector files, fonts, stock images and photos, 3D options, full designer collections, and more.
What's also nice is that their search bar is quite good. We've always had success finding exactly what we need when utilizing their search bar.
Envato Elements
Price: $16/month
Free Trial: 7-days
Envato Elements offers a ton! For Envato's price, it's a great deal, considering everything you'll have access to.
And as a bonus, Envato Elements has a pretty good education section to help teach you how to use some of the most popular graphic design tools.
What you'll get:
- Stock video
- Video templates
- Music
- Sound effects
- Graphic templates
- Presentation templates
- Stock images and photos
The thing that's great about this tool is that you'll have access to a lot of other creators out there in the world that make many of the designs you'll see.
Adobe Stock
Price: Starting at $29/month and all the way up to $199/month, depending on your needs.
I must admit, this is one of the most expensive stock image/video tools, but the quality is outstanding. When you download a stock image from Adobe Stock, rest-assured that it will be a high-quality image or video.
Nothing is worse than downloading a stock image or photo only to realize that once you expand it or make it larger, it quickly gets pixelated. You won't have that problem with Adobe Stock. Their quality is really good, and I've never had any issues with quality.
So what do you get for the starter pack for $29/month?
Unfortunately, not as much as the other resources we mention. For the starter package, you'll only get ten standard assets a month. Standard assets include standard images, templates, audio, and vector/PSD files. And keep in mind that one download video will quickly eat up your allotted asset amount. For example, the last video I downloaded cost six assets.
But an awesome thing I do like about Adobe Stock is that any unused credits will just continue to roll over into the next subsequent months. Right now, we have about 100 credits to use.
In the past, you wouldn't get much more than stock videos with Adobe Stock, but they've recently added more, which we love.
Get access to:
- Stock images, photos
- Stock videos
- PSD, vector files
- Illustrations
- Templates
- Video
- Audio (newer)
- Fonts
- Added plugins
- 3D
Soundstripe
Price: $9.99/month or $19.99/month for Pro
Soundstripe is fantastic for finding music, sound effects, and curated playlists. They've also recently added even more tools, which I'll list below.
Yes, you can find stock audio at other places, but I like Soundstripe because they make it extremely simple to find what you need. I love how you can filter the type of music or SFX you want.
You can search and filter by genre, characteristic, mood, speed, and more. And their music isn't the same redundant, cheesy music many stock audio sites provide. These tracks are high-quality produced and make me want to jam out to them in my car.
What's also cool and new is their new Soundstripe app.
Sometimes I don't want to break out my laptop or hop on my work computer to find what I need. The Soundstream App is helpful when you're just lounging on the couch and want to scroll through some music to use on your next piece of content. This saves a lot of time. I can easily find some really good songs in just a few minutes simply by using their app and filtering a few options to download what I need.
Soundstripe Projects
Soundstripe recently rolled out "Projects," which is pretty cool. With "Projects," you can stay organized and have your own media hub where you can store your files, share and collaborate, and revisit your project history.
Soundstripe is one of our favorites for audio and well worth the price.
Bonus: Flaticon
I had to add this app, Flaticon in here as a bonus because it's just too good to pass up and it has saved me so much time.
A lot of time.
Price: $8.25/month
The reason why I had Flaticon here as a bonus is because it's actually tied to our first recommendation, FreePik. You can combine your subscriptions with FreePik and Flaticon to get a better deal.
So what exactly is Flaticon?
Flaticon's focus is icons and stickers. I love it when an app focuses really well on just a few things, and Flaticon does just that. I like to combine my subscription to utilize both FreePik and Flaticon together.
Here are a few items I use Flaticon for:
- Variety of icons
- Icon variations, like bold or regular styles
- Interface icons
- Animated icons, downloadable as a gif or video file
- Stickers
Oh, and one more thing I love about this tool. While you're downloading the icon you need, you can actually edit and change the colors on the fly. For example, if you download a red cloud icon, you can instantly change it to purple before quickly downloading it.
Summary
These apps should supply you with a good, affordable start. Even if you choose one or two of these stock image and video tools you'll be able to find almost everything you need. And if you discover that you prefer one more than the other, they make it easy for you to cancel.
I love apps like these, probably too much. I've had to cut back recently because I just had too many comparable stock apps. But every now and then I'll switch things out just for a new look and feel.
There are a lot of good, quality stock resources out there and we use many others. We'll create another post down the road to discuss a few more. But for now, I think you'll really enjoy these.
Thank You!