Pakutaso, a Japanese stock photo site, gives away more than 60,146 photos and AI-made images for free, with no sign-up, no download limits and no credit line required, and many of them star professional models who signed release forms.
That last point is what sets it apart. Free photo libraries usually avoid pictures of identifiable people, because portrait rights are a legal minefield. Pakutaso says every photo in its people and models section was published only after the subject gave written permission for their likeness to be used, and that hardly any other free site offers that.
Who runs it and where the name comes from
The site was opened in 2011 by an administrator who goes by the handle Sushipaku. The site’s own about page dates the launch to May 2011, while its Japanese Wikipedia entry gives April. Friends started calling him “Paku-san” and “Pakutan”, and the nickname drifted into Pakutaso. It has added new pictures on nearly every weekday since launch.
Pakutaso says its photos are all originals shot and owned by registered photographers. It does not repost images from other free libraries or anything with an unclear origin. Staff review each picture before it goes live and clean it up first: dropping missed shots, correcting color and lens distortion, cropping and removing dust spots. The site says it does this because it wants free images to match paid ones.
Parody pictures and town-approved photo sets
Its slogan translates roughly as “fun to use, fun to look at”. The operators actively recommend their parody photos and invite visitors to heckle the pictures as they scroll. Japanese web users know the site for themed sets such as photos of people spending Christmas alone and pictures staged to look like street-corner political speeches, each release drawing its own wave of coverage at home.
Much of the catalog comes from collaborations. Its Japanese Wikipedia timeline lists sets made with the official blessing of local governments, including Isumi in Chiba Prefecture and Imari in Saga Prefecture in 2015, plus shoots with bodybuilders and professional mahjong players that same year. In March 2020 it released an esports photo set built around the fighting game Street Fighter V with the approval of its publisher Capcom, billed as the first time a game maker had officially backed free stock photos of its game. The site earns money from advertising and sponsors.
What you can and cannot do with the photos
- Allowed: downloading without an account, commercial use in blogs, ads, slides and videos, and skipping the photo credit entirely.
- Not allowed: printing the images onto products for sale, such as calendars, postcards or merchandise.
- Not allowed: redistributing the files or uploading them to other stock libraries.
The practical takeaway for anyone outside Japan: these photos are free to use in a presentation or a blog post, but putting one on a mug or T-shirt you plan to sell breaks the rules. Stock pictures have a habit of escaping into internet culture, as when three Tokyo friends went viral dressed as a corporate stock photo, and questions about where images come from are getting sharper as studies test how AI image tools picture the real world.
Pakutaso says three features will never arrive no matter what: membership registration, paid sales and download limits.
Further reading
Image: Dick Thomas Johnson, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
