Photoshop is a powerful, but expensive, tool for inserting images to  spread ideas and make the case for community improvements. However, getting the right images is a painstaking, often expensive, & a sensitive topic for people who don't want their faces in your powerpoint (especially children). Luckily, cutouts let us pop copyright-free people and amentities into our own presentations in Powerpoint or Indesign.

Here are a couple of resources for free, high quality resources for images

Mr Cutout has a big collection of people, landscaping and backgrounds. The free version allows small downloads each day and Pro versions begin at $26/year. Commercial use allowed. CutoutLife is a small but sharp collection for free use as well.

Skalgubbar is a Swedish site with over 200 images.  Use is free but limited to architectural projects with attribution to Skalgubbar.com

NONSCANDINAVIA is a project organized by A-Frame, a student group operating out of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. The collection aims to increase the diversity of people in images used to depict projects and places. Limited to  educational, personal, and otherwise non-commercial use. 

If you're working in South or Central America, or with Latino populations,  check out Escala Latina.(Creative Commons 4.0 International License that allows commercial and non-commercial use with attribution).  Skalgubbrasil also features Brazilian photos for use.

VizPeople is a European site with paid & free cutouts. They also include cutouts for interiors - as well as dogs & cats.

Tips: Shadows can be tricky so choose outdoor images on a cloudy day or use software that lets you manipulate shadows.  The cutouts are generally bright so you may need to color correct the image a couple of shades darker. With vegetation, match cutouts with geography  (sorry but we all can't have palm trees) and time of year.

Please use attribution for images (the image above is from MrCutout).  Let us know what other resources are out there for free use, particularly for transportation.

Before image (left) and  scene with trees inserted (right).