Public Domain Images - High Resolution Free Photos

This gallery contains hundreds of high resolution public domain images with new images added weekly. Some of these images are over 10MB in size, so if they take a little longer to load, that’s why. We appreciate your patience and please just know that it will be worth the wait.

These images are all released under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication. This is pretty awesome because this means that the person associated with the photos has dedicated the photos to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. What’s even more awesomer is that you can copy, modify, distribute, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. What’s awesomer-est is that we have gone through the trouble of downloading all of the images from unsplash.com and put them in an easier format to consume.

One of the things that we love doing at PublicDomainArchive.com is simplifying the public domain. This is one of those cases where it’s next to impossible to really get your creative eye going because the images on the original site at unsplash are all so large that you can really only see one at a time. When I’m brainstorming for my design work I need to look holistically at my inspirational images and then I start narrowing down to my final picks. Hopefully, you will appreciate being able to see the images in a more streamlined approach. Thanks for stopping by and please let us know what you think about these awesome public domain images.

 

71 Comments

  1. The web has needed an archive like this. Thank you for providing it!

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    • Caelan, Thanks for stopping by! I am glad that you like the site. Looking forward to helping creative folks have the quality resources they need to make an honest living! Talk to you soon.

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      • Agreed. Thank you for you putting this together.

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        • It’s my pleasure Bryan! Thanks for visiting!

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          • Yes indeed, this is awesome! How do the original artists get paid though?

          • Thanks Nate I’m glad you like the site. The original artists are either myself or images curated from other websites that release images into the public domain. So the images are free. As far as our website goes we make about $100 per month from Google AdSense. That’s just enough money to pay for the server. We don’t really make any money from the site at this point. However in the future when we release the premium members option for the website (which will be $10 per month)we will introduce a revenue-sharing system that will offer compensation to people that release their images directly to public domain archive. Hopefully will have the premium membership launched within the next month or so.

  2. Just amazing!Thank you guys

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    • Thanks SO Much! Glad you like!

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  3. Thanks so much for this great source of resources and inspiration 🙂

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    • You are welcome Radu! Thanks for checking us out.

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  4. Yes, these photos are great. Thank you for making such a great archive!
    I will definitely recommend to my friends.

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    • Thanks Віктор for sharing the love! We really appreciate it!!! 🙂

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  5. Beautiful images! Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

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    • You’re welcome Cocoa. Thanks for the compliment! I am glad you are finding the site useful.

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  6. The quality of the photography is great! Thank you so much.

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    • You are welcome Andrew. Glad you like the photos!!!

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  7. To second — and third and fourth and fifth what everyone else has already said — this collection is incredible. Some truly dazzling photography. You are to be congratulated for assembling such an archive. It will prove to be an invaluable resource to those of us who appreciate the art of photography. Just one question: At the risk of seeming like a total ignoramus, how do you download a photograph? Thanks.

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    • Thanks Trevor! I am truly humbled by the response of you and everyone who has commented and offered their thanks and appreciation. It is my joy to offer this site to those who find it useful.

      To answer your question. When I first launched the site I was uploading images in galleries like the one on this page. So, it was a page full of thumbnails and you click the thumbnail to load the high resolution photo and then you right click and save as to download the image. The problem with this is that the images tend to load pretty slowly and this can be a problem when there are hundreds of images on a page. There are only 3 or 4 galleries like this.

      After I realized this issue I started loading one image at a time rather than a gallery of images. Now there are typically no more than 10 images per page. And the images that you see are lower resolution (placeholder/previews) so that the page will load faster. To download the newer images, you click on the image preview you would like to download and this will take you to a page that has a download button. The download button links to an external high resolution image and thus keeps from having to load a larger file size/high resolution photo into the browser, which would slow down the site.

      Hopefully this will help you to figure it all out. It’s still a bit of a work in progress but we’re learning something everyday.
      Thanks,
      Matt

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  8. Thank you so much for the work, very useful !

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    • You are welcome Valentin. I am glad that you are finding my site useful!

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      • barba hijo de puta maricon afeitate

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  9. This site is incredible. Already implementing photos in my work. Thank you!

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    • Thanks Wren! I’m glad to hear that you like our site. We’re working on a featured section of the site where we will be featuring works created using images from our site. So, shoot me an email with some of your work using these images and we’ll feature it.

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  10. It’s really great what you are doing here. I hope to contribute soon. We’ve got some beautiful scenery here in Montana that I think people will enjoy.

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    • Thanks! I would love to see your photography. Shoot me an email with some of your pics.

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  11. Hey Matt … loving the site. Just to add my shout out to say thanks for offering this awesome facility. Just a suggestion. In addition to the monthly $10 Premium subscription it might be an idea to have a Donate button, as you wouldn’t want to lose one off donations from people who want to support you but don’t need the Premium monthly sub.

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    • Thanks Richard! That’s a great suggestion and I will definitely make that an option. It’s definitely A LOT of work trying to maintain this site and any donations will be very much appreciated. Thanks for commenting and I also got your email and am working on the issue you mentioned. All the best.
      -Matt

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  12. Hi Matt!
    I love your site. My hat tip for providing an awesome site like this. Beautiful images. To quote wordpress, this is priceless and free at the same time. Thanks!

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    • Thanks Jonathan! I appreciate your kind words and thanks for sharing our site. Glad that you like the photos.

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  13. Thank you so much for your beautiful generosity!

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    • You’re welcome Mary Jane. Thanks for the comment!

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  14. Great photos, thanks.

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  15. Hello, I just discovered this site recently and I must say (as many more before me), that it is simply amazing. Thank you so much for sharing these pictures. But I am a little worried, because I see that you don’t answer comments on daily basis like before and also last post is from Jun 13. I am thinking about contributing my work, but well, I would like to know if it is still working here before I do so.

    Thank you again and good luck.

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    • Hi Barbora, thanks for leaving the comment. I am still here and the site is definitely continuing. I’m just been tied up in some other things so I haven’t been able to post as many images lately(keep in mind that this is a side project that I really don’t make any money from). I have been working on other things to provide for my family. Hopefully I’ll be able to get more images up this week. I would love for you to contribute. Thanks for reaching out.

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      • Wow, that was quick :). Thank you for your reply. I am really glad to hear that. I hope that my photos will meet your standards.

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  16. wonderful!

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  17. ORSUM Matt,
    Thanks for this
    George
    Merewether Beach
    Australia

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    • Glad you are enjoying it!

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  18. You did just basically copy https://unsplash.com. It’s fine that’s what public domain is for, but if you’re gonna take credit, you might at least mention them.

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    • Maybe I was hasty in my judgement. There’s more here than I thought. My apologies.

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      • Thanks For the comments daniel. We do pull from some of the other public domain sites out there but I also have released a ton of my personal work on the site. Here’s a link to many of my personal photos https://publicdomainarchive.com/public-domain-images-personal-contribution/

        Plus there are many more scattered throughout the site. Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate your comments. I will try to do a better job attributing the source of the public domain images.
        Thanks,
        Matt

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  19. Matt: Thanks so much for sharing so many of your own photos. And thanks for beautifying my little blog.

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    • We are so happy to share our photos with you an the public domain images of others, glad it’s been helpful to you!

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  20. Thank you so much for this beautiful resource! We as designers are lucky to have folks such as you and your wife working on such a great project. I love the idea of using my own pictures, but I just don’t have everything I need. Your site serves two awesome purposes- one as a resource and the other as inspiration to get other there and take some high quality images that I can donate to our public domain. Thank you so much!

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    • Abegail, thank you so much for those kind words 🙂 We’re lucky to have people like you who appreciate what we are doing and take the time to tell us so! Best of luck to you in all that you do!

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  21. Wow, thank you so much guys!! Awsome pic galery :))

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    • Thanks Jane! We’re glad you like the pics!!!

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  22. thank u so much !!!amazing color stories!!

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    • You’re welcome Katherine! Thanks for your comment.

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  23. Hey, how many Pictures are in the Pool actually?

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    • We have a little over 1200 images right now but we just ramped up our premium membership are adding hundreds of images every week to our bulk downloads for premium members.

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  24. Just joined and took up your premium membership hope that helps keep the site going strong. Just one thing as a premium member do you have to download each image individually or how do you access the bulk downloads?

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    • Ruary,
      Thanks SO MUCH for supporting us! We couldn’t do this without you!!! To access the bulk downloads click on the “Log In” link in the menu of our site. Once you log in you will automatically be taken to the bulk downloads page. Please let me know if you have any other questions. You can always email us too.
      Thanks again,
      Matt

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  25. You are the best for putting out the energy and time to create this! This elevates design and has raised the bar for artists and design communities. I teach design at a college and appreciate your generosity and the aesthetic gifts of the other photographers as well as yourself! Thank you!

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  26. Thanks a lot for sharing awesome stuff…

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  27. Thank you so much for doing this for all of us. There are some truely amazing photos here, its just awesome to have an archive like this to turn to.

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  28. Thank you so much! Love your site!!

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  29. Thanks!!! It’s really amazing!

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  30. Awesome site, this is not just a photo, this is HIGH QUALITY photo!

    Thanks a lot for share, you’re the best.

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  31. The pictures are amazing. Thanks for helping others. Amazing attitude!

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  32. Thank you so much!Great site and generous creator 🙂

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  33. 怎么下载

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  34. Wow, this is such an amazing resource. Such beautiful photos <3 <3 <3

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  35. Nice gallery! I decided to do the same on the ground in Russia 🙂

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  36. Thank you so much! Awesome help!

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  37. I’m lovin’ this. I just started messing about with editing photos and these are really useful and high quality ^.^

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  38. Wow, great collection. I am loving to use.

    Thank you so much for providing high quality photos.

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  39. can i take this image to another siteweb plz

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    • Absolutely! Go for it!

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  40. I picked up a photo to be my website homepage cover.. Thanks for your work..

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