Quick answer: The best images for digital signage come from three places: assets you already own, licensed stock libraries, and AI image generators. Whatever the source, size each image to match your screen’s resolution, use a high-contrast composition, keep text minimal, and confirm you have the rights to use it commercially.
Great visuals are the fastest way to stop someone mid-stride and pull their eyes to a screen. The trick is finding (or making) images that are on-brand, legal to use, and built for the way people actually look at signage: in a glance, from a distance, in passing. Here is where to get good graphics for your digital signage, how to create your own with AI, and how to optimize them so every screen looks sharp.
Where to Find Images for Digital Signage
You probably have more graphics at your fingertips than you realize. Start close to home before you go shopping. A little planning helps here: skim our digital signage design tips first so you know what makes an image work on screen before you start pulling assets together.
Look Inside Your Own Organization
- Marketing and design teams usually sit on a library of approved photos, illustrations, icons, and brand graphics. Ask for access to the brand asset folder or database. These are already on-brand and cleared for use, which solves two problems at once.
- Presentations and reports. Photos, charts, and graphs inside your team’s PowerPoint and PDF decks can be pulled out and reused as signage graphics in seconds.
- Your website and intranet. Hero images, product shots, and infographics on your own pages are fair game and reinforce a consistent look across channels.
- HR, events, and facilities. Training visuals, event photos, and new-hire shots make timely, relevant content that feels local to your audience.
Free Stock Image Sites
When you need something fresh, a long list of sites offer high-quality images at no cost. Always check the license on each individual image, since terms can vary even on free sites: confirm whether you can edit it, whether attribution is required, and whether commercial use is allowed.
Paid Stock Libraries
For deeper catalogs, advanced search, and broader licensing, paid libraries are worth the spend, especially if you publish a lot of content. Look for subscription plans that match how many images you download per month.
- Shutterstock offers photos, illustrations, and vectors, with a useful search-by-color feature for matching brand palettes.
- Adobe Stock integrates directly with Creative Cloud apps.
- iStock and Getty Images carry large royalty-free collections.
Whatever you buy, stay inside the limits of your license agreement on how, where, and how long you can use each image.
How to Create Graphics with AI Tools
AI image generators have become a practical way to produce original, on-brand visuals when you can’t find the right stock photo and don’t have time for a shoot. The key is picking the right tool and writing a clear prompt.
Many digital signage apps include AI tools for generating text, graphics, or both. Explore your CMS options before turning to an outside source, since these built-in tools are often fine-tuned to work best with the system, content, and displays you’re already using.
Choosing an AI Image Tool
Each tool has a sweet spot, so match it to the job:
- Nano Banana (Google) delivers some of the sharpest, most detailed output available, and it is especially good at editing and blending existing images, which is handy for adapting a photo to a screen.
- DALL-E / GPT Image (via ChatGPT) is strong at following detailed prompts closely and at rendering legible text, which is handy for quick concepts.
- Adobe Firefly is trained on licensed and public-domain content and is designed for commercial safety, which makes it the most defensible choice for brand work. It also lives inside Creative Cloud, so it fits an existing design workflow.
- Midjourney produces the highest aesthetic and photorealistic quality, so it shines for atmospheric, hero-style imagery.
- Ideogram is built for rendering clean, readable text inside an image.
Keep in mind that many conversational AI tools, including ChatGPT and Google Gemini, can generate images right inside a chat thread, so you don’t need a separate image-generation app to get started.
Always read the current commercial-use terms for whichever tool you choose, and avoid generating real brand logos, trademarked characters, or recognizable real people unless you have the rights.
How to Prompt an AI Image Generator
A reliable prompt follows a simple formula. Stack these elements in plain language:
Subject + context + composition + style + lighting and color + technical specs
For digital signage specifically, add two instructions that most people forget:
- Ask for negative space. Tell the tool to leave a clean, empty area where your headline or call to action will sit. This keeps text legible instead of fighting a busy image.
- Name the orientation, ratio, and resolution. Request 16:9 for landscape screens or 9:16 for portrait screens, and state the pixel dimensions so the output matches your screen without cropping or upscaling.
A few more tips that improve signage results: ask for high contrast and a simple background so the image reads from across a room, specify your brand colors by name or hex value, and keep the scene uncluttered. If the first result is close, refine one variable at a time rather than rewriting the whole prompt.
Example prompts you can adapt:
- “A bright, modern open-plan office with two employees collaborating at a standing desk, shot from a low angle, lots of clean negative space on the right for text, soft natural window light, calm blue and white palette, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1920 x 1080 pixels, photorealistic.”
- “Flat vector illustration of a recycling icon, bold simple shapes, high contrast, solid teal background, minimal detail, 9:16 vertical layout, 1080 x 1920 pixels, plenty of empty space at the bottom for a caption.”
- “Overhead photo of a fresh salad bowl on a wooden table, warm natural light, shallow depth of field, generous empty space on the left third, food photography style, 16:9, 3840 x 2160 pixels.”
One important habit: even when a tool can render text inside an image, it’s usually better to add your headlines and calls to action in your digital signage software instead. Text added in your content management system stays crisp at any resolution and can be edited later without regenerating the whole graphic.
How to Choose Graphics That Work on Screens
Finding an image is only half the job. A graphic that looks great on your laptop can fall apart on a wall-mounted screen viewed from twenty feet away. Run every candidate through these checks.
- Prioritize contrast. Contrast is the single biggest factor in legibility. Use light graphics on dark backgrounds and dark graphics on light backgrounds, and never let an image overpower the text sitting on top of it.
- Keep it simple. Crop out distracting backgrounds and zoom in on the one element that matters. A clean image with breathing room reads faster than a crowded one.
- Stay on brand. Choose graphics that complement your color scheme and visual identity so screens feel like part of the same family.
- Know your audience. Consider demographics, preferences, and cultural context. When you show people, represent a range of ages, races, and genders, and watch for symbols that carry different meanings across regions.
- Keep it legal. Never grab an image off Google, a competitor’s site, or social media and assume it’s free to use. Doing so is copyright infringement and can lead to real fines. Use assets you own, properly licensed stock, or AI images you have the rights to.
How to Optimize and Format Images for Digital Signage
Once you’ve chosen a graphic, format it for the screen. Matching your file to the display’s native specs is what prevents the blurry, stretched, or squashed images you see far too often. For a closer look at sizing for each screen shape, see our guide on aspect ratios for digital signage.
| Spec | What to use |
| Landscape resolution | 1920 x 1080 px (16:9) |
| Portrait resolution | 1080 x 1920 px (9:16) |
| 4K screens | 3840 x 2160 px (landscape) or 2160 x 3840 px (portrait) |
| Preferred file type | JPG for photos, PNG for graphics, logos, or transparency |
| File size | Aim for roughly 2–3 MB so images load fast on the network |
| Resolution match | Export at the screen’s native resolution, never smaller |
A few rules of thumb that go with the table:
- Don’t upscale. You can always shrink a large image, but enlarging a small one creates fuzzy, pixelated results. When in doubt, start with more resolution than you need.
- Leave a margin. Keep critical text and logos away from the very edges, since some screens crop a few pixels at the border.
- Mind the text. Keep on-image copy short and high-impact, since signage is glanced at, not read. A few bold words beat a full sentence every time.
Common image mistakes to avoid
- Dropping in a full PDF or document. PDFs are built for reading, not glancing. If you must use one, make sure it has a bold headline, minimal text, and the right dimensions for your content block.
- Mismatched clip art. Match the tone of the graphic to the message. A comic cartoon undercuts a formal announcement.
- Orphan images. A photo with no context leaves viewers confused. Add a short title or caption with a QR code for more info, or place an explanatory message right before or after it in the playlist.
Shooting Your Own Photos: The Short Version
Sometimes the best image is one you take yourself. You don’t need a pro kit, just a few habits:
- Shoot at the highest resolution your camera or phone allows, and avoid heavy compression.
- Shoot in the orientation you’ll display: rotate the camera for portrait shots rather than cropping a landscape photo later.
- Use the rule of thirds. Divide what you’re seeing into a 3×3 grid, and place key elements along the lines and at their intersections, slightly off center.
- Mind the light. Well-lit subjects get noticed first. Avoid over- and underexposure, and skip the indoor flash.
- Brace the camera or use a tripod to avoid shake, and get feedback on which images your audience actually remembers.
Want to go further? Our digital signage design guide is a free masterclass that covers layout, color, contrast, and composition in depth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What size should images be for digital signage?
Use 1920 x 1080 pixels for landscape (16:9) screens and 1080 x 1920 pixels for portrait (9:16) screens. For 4K displays, double those dimensions to 3840 x 2160. Always export at the screen’s native resolution so the image stays sharp.
What is the best file format for digital signage images?
JPG is the best all-around choice for photos because it balances quality and file size. Use PNG for graphics, logos, or anything that needs a transparent background. Check your content management software for the full list of supported formats before you upload.
Can I use Google Images on digital signage?
No. Images found through a search engine are almost always copyrighted, and using them commercially without permission is illegal. Use images you own, licensed stock photos, or AI-generated images you hold the rights to.
Are AI-generated images safe to use on digital signage?
It depends on the tool. Adobe Firefly is built around licensed training data and commercial safety, while other tools have varying terms. Always read the current commercial-use license, and avoid generating real logos, trademarked characters, or identifiable real people.
How much text should go on a digital signage image?
Keep it minimal. For the crispest, most flexible results, add headlines and calls to action in your signage software rather than baking text into the image itself.