as most of you probably know, one of the lengthiest, most boring, and most time consuming parts of designing is sifting through the internet in an attempt to find a decent-looking, relatively hd picture to use for your graphic.

so below are a couple tips and resources on where to find good photos!

all links will be in the comments section below.

Unless you're looking for basic stuff such as 'space' and 'minimalistic girl' and 'silhouettes,' don't use google/bing/yahoo search, or whatever else there is. This will only complicate the whole process and it will face you to sift through tons of random photos from random people. However, if you're going to search with google, and you want a nice image, here are a couple tips:

- add in the word 'tumblr' at the end of your search or 'photography'. These will usually give you far prettier pictures to work with.

- use google/web browser for finding GIFs

- don't type in 'blond boy' for example, you'll end up with random instagram selfies from 13 year olds with bleached and gelled hair

- if you type in '.... png,' you'll end up with cutouts on occasion

- use it for finding celebrity photoshoots

www.pinterest.com

The good thing about pinterest is that people choose what goes on there, so you typically won't find random peoples' selfies. It's like the internet image search, but filtered, and an account lets you sort out and save every nice picture you come across in special pinning boards. It's also got a very well filtered search, and looking up pictures is very easy.

- be aware that not every model/picture will be on pinterest

- if you want to upload your graphics into pinterest to get URLs for them, make sure you upload them onto a secret board if you don't want anyone to be able to see them

- make sure you check out people's boards and follow them or their boards, so that the awesome pictures they pin come up on your feed and you can save them!

what I use it for:

- uploading graphics to store them

- saving and finding great photos and pictures for making graphics

extras:

- free sign-up, only email required

www.deviantart.com

DeviantArt is one of the largest (or possibly the largest) artistic communities on the internet, and it's brilliant. It's great for looking at other peoples' artwork, and for sharing your own art and for getting opinions on it. People also make things called 'texture packs' on DA, which are great for making the backgrounds of graphics, and they offer them up for free for people to download them. If you do download them, make sure you leave a vote on their work and make sure to give them credit if you use their textures and they ask for cres!

It's also good for downloading good-quality pngs. I've never used it for that before, but there's everything on there. To search, search '... textures' or 'png.'

what I use it for:

- graphic inspo

- texture downloads

- wasting time looking at disney and sherlock fanart

- crying over people's talent

for textures/pngs, some people you should check out/watch:

missy-xox

Cloozy

Silent-yelling

Carllon

So-ghislaine

extras:

- sign-up is free, all you need to put in is your email

- you can find me there at stardust24601 lmao

Yep, you heard me! Wattpad is great for finding good pictures: tons of people have made threads in which they post random and pretty photos that might come handy for making graphics. Links to those I know about and like are in the comments section.

, I hope that was helpful! those are the websites I can think of right now, but I'll probably end up posting a part two for this! Thank you for reading~