Displaying professional, high-resolution images across your posts, pages, and headers can elevate the look of your site. But what if you need a specific photo — an adorable pup portrait at the park, for instance — but don’t have one of your own? With the new Free Photo Library, you have access to over 40,000 free images, thanks to Pexels, a library of stock photos. Learn how to make the most of this new feature in your Media Library.
Find a featured image for your latest post
Want more options? We also recommend these sites for free images and patterns.
Here’s the scenario: you’re finalizing the new destination guide to New York City on your travel website. You’ve got tons of daytime shots from your last trip, but don’t have a striking nighttime image of Manhattan for your featured image.
In the Free Photo Library, you can choose from thousands of free images. When creating a post, click on Add, then select Free photo library:
In the field at the top, enter keywords for the type of image you want (“New York City,” “Manhattan”). You can also try general terms (“city,” “night,” “street”) to widen your results, or get more specific (“Brooklyn Bridge,” “Statue of Liberty”) to narrow your search.
Select and insert an image, and that’s it! A photographer credit is automatically added to the caption. If you’d like to make additional edits, click on the image and then the pencil icon (Edit), tweak the caption or other fields like the Alt text and Description, or scroll down to view the image’s dimensions.
Choose a full-width photograph for your header area
Many themes support custom images in the main header area or on individual pages. An image in your header should be memorable and representative of your work or site’s theme — a photo of a vintage typewriter or an open notebook may be fitting for the site of a novelist, for example. Abstract images also work well in a header — if you’re a crime and mystery writer, a moody bokeh image can effectively set the tone.
To display an image in your header, first add the photo to your Media Library (My Site(s) → Media), click the down-facing arrow at the top left next to the image icon, then select Free photo library from the dropdown menu. After you’ve copied the photo to your library, go to My Site(s) → Customize → Header Image, click Add New Image, select the photo, and crop if necessary.
Now, with so many choices at your fingertips, you can update your header image regularly to refresh the look of your site in a snap. You can also enable the Randomize uploaded headers setting so your readers will see a different image on each visit.
Revisit your theme’s support page to check the ideal image dimensions for elements like featured images, headers, your site logo, and more. If you know these optimal sizes, you can adjust an image if needed, right in your Media Library or with another editing tool like PicMonkey, Canva, or Pixlr.
Learn more about the Free Photo Library. It’s also available on the WordPress app, so be sure to update to the latest version.
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This was so incredibly helpful and well done; thank you!
LikeLiked by 15 people
Randomize uploaded headers setting is very useful. Thanks for this good post.
LikeLiked by 14 people
I like that there is this free resource for bloggers. Also, thanks for mentioning how certain images relay a tone to the thematics of one’s website – like the bokeh lights for a mystery site. That is important. I can tell you that I’ve seen many great sites that are often overlooked because of the disconnect between the photos featured and the text/story. Branding is one of the biggest and broadest concepts of self branding in the digital scape and anyway, it was a good reminder. Maybe you can write a post about that or provide the link for it if you’ve already covered this? Thanks.
LikeLiked by 16 people
Thanks for your insights!
In terms of branding posts, we’ve only touched on it here and there in the resources below, focused primarily on strengthening your visual identity:
https://wordpress.com/discover-wordpress/2018/02/27/build-visual-brand/
https://wordpress.com/discover-wordpress/2018/03/22/how-to-create-website-logo/
https://wordpress.com/discover-wordpress/2017/07/31/site-logo-examples/
https://wordpress.com/discover-wordpress/2018/03/13/free-fonts/
https://wordpress.com/discover-wordpress/2017/09/25/libre-custom-header/
https://wordpress.com/discover-wordpress/2018/04/26/create-a-custom-button/
We have some posts on branding from our other site, The Daily Post, but they are older (though they still include some helpful general advice):
https://wordpress.com/dailypost/assignments/blogging-201-audit-your-brand/
https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2013/07/17/blog-branding/
https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2013/04/13/branding-your-blog-lets-get-visual-101/
Thanks!
LikeLiked by 14 people
Thank you!!
LikeLiked by 11 people
This is amazing!
LikeLiked by 11 people
Pictures bring to life a blog post. Thanks for sharing such incredible post. Very useful — every blogger should tap in here.
LikeLiked by 12 people
This was terrific Cheri. Thank you.
LikeLiked by 16 people
Great tip, thanks!
LikeLiked by 12 people
Thanks this is an incredibly helpful post as I was looking for some good photos to use for my site header and some posts 👍
LikeLiked by 15 people
Very helpful, thank you very much 🙂
LikeLiked by 12 people
Useful 👌
LikeLiked by 10 people
thank you…truly informative. And the app is convenient to use.
LikeLiked by 11 people
Cool bananas! Thank you! 🙂 I’m fortunate to have quite a few photographers agreeable to my sharing of their photos (with credit, of course) on my blog, but it is always great to have more resources and this sounds like an outstanding one. Hurray!
LikeLiked by 10 people
Super helpful!!
LikeLiked by 10 people
Another helpful post! Thanks
LikeLiked by 11 people
That’s cool! I’m sure this will be really helpful for a lot of people!
LikeLiked by 11 people
Thank you for this!
LikeLiked by 9 people
Thanks from a new blogger.
LikeLiked by 11 people
It Was really helpful thank you for sharing 🙂
LikeLiked by 8 people
Thank you! This is very helpful
LikeLiked by 10 people
Thank you that was helpful.
LikeLiked by 8 people
Thanks for these incredible resources!
LikeLiked by 6 people
What a great resource!
LikeLiked by 6 people
Thanks for the tips!
LikeLiked by 7 people
Loved reading this and all the tips! Photography is a passion of mine and I love being able to incorporate pictures into my blog. Thanks so much for sharing this! ❤
LikeLiked by 7 people
This is good to know.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Thanks for guiding us. This post is really helpful.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Always looking for royalty free pics … thanks …
LikeLiked by 8 people
This is great resource and will be really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
LikeLiked by 8 people
Thank you! This is VERY helpful!
LikeLiked by 9 people
Thanks for sharing, you included such good tips!
LikeLiked by 8 people
Thanks for the guide, this is very helpful.
LikeLiked by 7 people
Thanks for a great post here!
LikeLiked by 6 people
This is so so helpful ❤
LikeLiked by 6 people
Thank you for this tip! I will use this as i put together several genealogy blogs. I would never have found this feature on my own.
LikeLiked by 9 people
Wow thanks a lot for this. It was quite helpful. I will try using these in my posts.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Thanks for the tip! I will try it!
LikeLiked by 6 people
Thanks Cheri. Most useful tips.
LikeLiked by 6 people