Our story so far
Founded in 2013 as a humble Tumblr blog, Unsplash has grown into an industry-leading visual community. It’s become a source of inspiration for everyone from award-winning writers like Deepak Chopra to industry-titans like Apple, and millions of creators worldwide.
🎨 Unsplash+ now has Illustrations
We’ve just released a new content type on Unsplash+. Say hello to illustrations!
👀 1 Trillion Views
With 5,162 views every second, this milestone shouldn’t come as such a surprise. Yet, the reality of surpassing 1 TRILLION views is truly mind-boggling.
➕ Introducing Unsplash+
We are excited to announce the launch of Unsplash+. An unlimited subscription for access to new content, features, and expanded legal protections. Unsplash+ also provides visual artists with unique opportunities to shoot commissioned content.
Don’t worry: the Unsplash open library isn’t going anywhere.
🌎 Unsplash is now in multiple languages
Unsplash’s language settings now reflect the diversity of our audience.
🌱 Introducing Unsplash for Good
Unsplash for Good supports charities and organizations by building awareness on global issues through visual content.
⬇️ Download History
In your Account Settings you’ll find a new section called ‘Download History’ that contains a list of all the images you’ve previously downloaded.
🏆 Unsplash Awards celebrates 5 years
Unsplash Awards celebrates 5 years running with judges from Nike, Dazed Digital, Google, Vice + more.
💎 Unsplash Library now accepts 3D Renders
Today we’re officially accepting 3D renders to the Unsplash Library!
🚀 Celebrating 3 Million Images on Unsplash
Unsplash Library reached 3 million images by 250,000 contributors!
👨💻 Unsplash + Zoom
Unsplash images now available in Zoom's new Virtual Backgrounds app!
🖥 Introducing Uses
The new ‘Uses’ feature allows you to now see exactly where and how your photos are used!
🤝 Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images
A huge milestone in Unsplash's journey - being acquired by Getty Images.
Unsplash continues to operate as a standalone brand and division of Getty Images. The entire Unsplash team will be staying and building Unsplash in the direction we have been. The main difference now is we have access to the resources and experience of Getty Images to help accelerate our plans to create the world’s most useful visual asset library.
📱 Unsplash for iOS is growing up
We’ve reworked almost everything: discovery, navigation, search, profiles and more.
🔎 Introducing Visual Search
Transforming our visual understanding of an image into keyword inputs is challenging. That's why we released Visual Search, which allows you to drop any version of an image into Unsplash to find similar images, topics & the source image.
📸 Introducing Unsplash Hire
We rolled out the Unsplash Hire: a more direct way to connect and work with Unsplash contributors to create world-class images. Whether it’s to find the perfect photographer for your event or to create new images for your company’s social media accounts, you can now connect easily on Unsplash.
🎁 Open sourcing Unsplash's dataset
We released the most complete high-quality open image dataset ever, free for anyone to use to further research in machine learning, image quality, search engines, and more.
🌍 The United Nations joins Unsplash
We teamed up with the United Nations to create an Open Visual Public Service Announcement System for the Internet in response to COVID-19.
🆕 Institutions join Unsplash
The Library of Congress, British Library, Boston Public Library, National Cancer Institute, and many more join Unsplash to share their vast libraries with the Unsplash community.
📣 Introducing Unsplash for Brands
We launched Unsplash for Brands, a new kind of advertising for the internet. One that doesn't have to be annoying or creepy to work.
🎓 Unsplash goes back to school
We launched Unsplash for Education - connecting students and teachers everywhere to powerful, inspiring visuals. Through our partnership with Instructure, the Unsplash library is now directly available in schools and universities around the world.
🗽 The New York Public Library joins Unsplash
The Unsplash library enters new territory, thanks to the New York Public Library’s new account showcasing powerful photography from important moments in history.
⬇️ 1 billion downloads
Which means, our community has inspired and enabled 1 billion creations - including presentations, reports, websites, collages, paintings, wallpapers, and more.
🙌 Thank you a million times
You’ve contributed 1 million images to Unsplash - allowing more people to create, more problems to be solved, and more progress to be made. And we owe it all to our passionate, creative community.
⚡️ Unsplash’s reach is unleashed
Over 1000 products are now powered by the Unsplash API. With new partners like BuzzFeed, Squarespace, and Figma, the Unsplash library is more widely accessible than ever.
🆕 A new logo for Unsplash
After years using a generic camera icon, our design team teamed up with Mackey Saturday to figure out an identity that works better for Unsplash.
🔌 Unsplash API integrated in 500 products
Unsplash API partners now account for 30 percent of the distribution power of Unsplash. Partners include Medium, Trello, FiftyThree, Product Hunt, Adobe, Google, Ghost, and Tencent (to name a few).
📸 Unsplash passes 500,000 photos
5 years ago, we added the tagline '10 photos every 10 days' when we only had 10 photos for the first version of Unsplash. We didn't know if we'd get more photos. Then, creators from around the world came together to make it happen.
📱 Unsplash for iOS launches
Today, we’re bringing all the freely usable photography on Unsplash to iPad and iPhone. And we’re doing it in a way that focuses not only on photography but on the creative use of it.
💵 Unsplash raises $8 million to build a new economy around photography
The Unsplash ecosystem is pushing the impact of photography further than ever before. Our aim is to make photography a universally accessible art form. The purpose of raising this investment is to build a new type of economic future for photography when it is set free.
⬇️ Unsplash passes 10 photo downloads per second
🖥 Introducing: Unsplash Wallpapers for Mac
A simple, free app to turn your Mac desktop background into a rotating gallery of stunning HD photography from the Unsplash community.
📸 The Unsplash library hits 300,000 photos
Another major milestone for the community as over 50,000 photographers contribute their work openly on Unsplash.
🏆 The Unsplash Awards
The Unsplash Awards are a month-long celebration created to recognize the powerful impact Unsplash contributors have made through their generosity and artistry.
🚀 Launch of the free Unsplash API
Serving over 300M+ requests/month to over 7,000 developers including Trello, InVision, and Weebly.
👋 Hello, Unsplash, Inc.
Unsplash spins out from Crew and will now operate as its own company. Our aim is to make Unsplash the most enjoyable, inspirational community in the world. Join the community or apply here if you'd like to help build Unsplash full-time.
👀 Unsplash hits 1 billion photos viewed per month
Over 3 photos are downloaded a second on Unsplash. And the Unsplash library has grown from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of photos. None of this would be possible without our community. One built on the principle of supporting creativity.
📺 Unsplash + Apple TV
We introduced Unsplash for Apple TV bringing thousands of beautiful photos to your living room.
🌎 Unsplash photos covering the world
Our community is quickly mapping the world in Creative Commons Zero photos.
🎂 Unsplash turns 3: Approaches 100 million downloads
In 3 years, over 8.8 billion photos were viewed on Unsplash. And downloaded 92 million times.
☕️ Introducing Unsplash HQ & Café
We turned our office into a cafe workspace for creators. Story on Fast Company, HypeBeast, and Cool Hunter.
🛰 SpaceX historic rocket sea landing on Unsplash
SpaceX makes history landing the first rocket at sea. And giving that photo for anyone to use on Unsplash.
🍎 Apple iPad + Unsplash
Apple iPad Pro launches with photos from Unsplash contributors Samuel Zeller and Anton Repponen.
📰 Photos featured on Unsplash now viewed more than the frontpage of the New York Times
With over 500 million photos viewed per month, photography on Unsplash now reaches more people than any other platform.
🥔 Pringles ad: May be one of the best things ever made with Unsplash
"You'll be her favorite grandkid, Andrew, once you give Grandma the #LastPringle". Original photo by Alex Harvey.
➕ Unsplash Collections: Searching Unsplash gets smarter
You’re the curator now. Unsplash Collections opens Unsplash up for anyone to create, sort, and share collections of Unsplash photos.
📚 Introducing Unsplash Book
Unsplash Book becomes the first fully crowdsourced open book featuring 250 pages of photos, essays, and art with contributors receiving a percentage of all profits. Featured by Kickstarter.
🚀 Unsplash Instant launches
Unsplash Instant puts downloadable Unsplash photos in your browser tabs. Instant was created during our #makeday hack event we have each month.
🚀 Unsplash API launches: Putting 30,000 high-resolution free photos in your app
What would you build with access to the most powerful photo engine in the world? We launched Unsplash API to bring more exposure to contributors and make it even easier to build great things with Unsplash photos.
🍎 Apple + Unsplash
We partnered with Apple stores in Montreal, Boston, and New York for Apple’s "Shot with iPhone" campaign. We turned Apple Stores into art galleries with photos from Unsplash.
🎟 Unsplash Events go worldwide: From Tokyo to Seoul to Honolulu to London
Over 30 events organized by local Unsplash Ambassadors.
🥳 Unsplash turns 2: Triples in 6 months
Unsplash turns 2 and hits 30 million downloads from 15 thousand photos, by 8 thousand photographers.
🥂 The First Unsplash Event
Starting in our hometown of Montreal, we began hosting events to meet and connect our community.
📰 Our way of doing business covered in Fast Company and Inc.
We believe making something useful is the best marketing there is.
Full story · Fast Company · Quartz · Inc
🔍 Unsplash Search
Unsplash Search launches powered by hundreds of thousands of tags contributed by the Unsplash community.
🚚 Unsplash moves off Tumblr. Passes 1 million downloads per month
Unsplash passes 1 million downloads per month. To keep up with growth, we moved Unsplash off Tumblr to a fully custom site. 776 photos on Unsplash at the time.
⬇️ Unsplash hits 10 million downloads
⬇️ Unsplash hits 1 million downloads
👨🏼💻 Co-founder Luke Chesser becomes first full-time Unsplash team member. (Finally gets his own desk.)
Luke had been sharing a beat up, sad-looking table. He was so excited to finally have his own desk that he posted it on Unsplash. Luke's desk has now been seen by over 2.7 million people.
🚀 Unsplash launches as a $19 Tumblr theme
We hated expensive, cheesy stock photos. Instead, we teamed up with a local photographer to take a few custom shots.
We only used one photo though. So with the extras, we setup a $19 tumblr theme and gave the rest of the images away for free. We launched on Hacker News and were voted the top story.
📸 First 10 Unsplash photos uploaded to public Dropbox
The first 10 Unsplash photos were hosted with Dropbox links.
We’ve got big plans for the future of Unsplash. If you want to help us create it, we’d love to hear from you.
We owe a huge thank you to the selfless Unsplash contributors who give their work for free in support of the community. Without them, none of this would be possible.
❤️️ With love,
