Ever find yourself in need of some great artistic inspiration – find Google images really isn’t cutting it for you? Need a great image for that project you’re working on? Sites abound online for discovering photography. The iPad, however, remains one of my favorite photo discovery devices. Stay tuned for some great applications for finding that perfect photo!

500px

Based on its web counterpart, 500px promises a gorgeous user experience. The photos range from wildlife to portraits, to landscape and everything in between. The pictures are continuously breath-taking.

500px

Pictures can be viewed in several categories. Check out the most popular, editors picks, upcoming and fresh photostreams. You can search, and view by category so if you’re looking for something specific, this is a great place to start.

Price: Free

The Guardian Eyewitness

The Guardian Eyewitness provides a much different method of photo discovery. As a news site, rather than focusing on a huge number of photos, they curate an app with only one photo per day. If you take inspiration from current events, this is the app for you.

The Guardian Eyewitness

Each daily picture provides a great photo, a small story, and my favorite part – a professional photography tip.

Price: Free

Flickr+

Flickr+, as you probably guessed from the name, is one of the better ways to view Flickr photos on the iPad. This app is very search-oriented. There isn’t a way to explore photographs without first entering some tag or category.

Flickr+

The app tends to choose better quality images, which is nice when dealing with sites where it consists entirely of user-submitted photos.

Price: Free

FlickStackr

FlickStackr is again an app that provides a better way to explore Flickr’s massive collections. What makes it different is that not only can you search the entire Flickr site for anything matching a certain tag, it also provides a great explore option.

FlickrStackr

Unlike other Flickr apps, this app’s explore section provides plenty of options and a better quality of image upon opening the app. The explore option seems to be more curated rather than arbitrary.

Price: $1.99

Getty Images

Getty Images is a stock photo site that provides a very high-quality, professional selection of photographs on their website. Their application is very similar to the site, providing very high quality images for your perusal. The images are watermarked, and must be purchased to be used.

Getty Images

If you’re just looking to peruse high quality images and don’t actually need the free use of an image for any purpose, Getty Images is a great way to do so. The search options are great, and you can find just about anything you’re looking for.

Price: Free

InstaBrowser

If you’re an Instagram fan, you know that it’s not always the easiest to go and look at Instagram pictures. Instagram can, however, provide some beautiful images for inspiration for photography and other art. InstaBrowser is one of those apps that allows you to peruse Instagram on the iPad.

InstaBrowser

You can look through the most popular photos, browse by location or even search by a specific tag.

Price: Free

InstaGallery

InstaGallery is another app that allows you to look through Instagram photos on the iPad. It offers the standard viewing methods – popular, tags, location based. You can also view a specific users Instagram photos if that’s more up your alley.

InstaGallery

If you have several pictures you like, you can “favorite” them. Those pictures can than be compiled into a slide show for convenient viewing, and can even be displayed using airplay.

Price: $1.99

Life

Life, based on its real world counterpart offers a fantastic collection of photographs. The app offers Life’s entire collection of photographs, all arranged geographically. You are greeted with a map upon first entering the app. Selecting one of the hundreds of locations on the map will take you to a screen showing you all of Life’s collections from that location.

Life

If you want to discover photos of a certain geographic location or event, this is a fantastic app for you. Life’s collections are gorgeous, although their search function is not the best. If you’re not interested in a certain area or story, but just general discovery this probably isn’t the app for you.

Price: Free

Photobucket

If you’re a Photobucket user already, this app is definitely worth checking out. Not only can you upload content to your existing albums, you can also peruse all of Photobucket’s photographs. As with any program based upon user uploads, the quality of the photographs that you’ll find isn’t always the greatest.

Photobucket

If you’re looking for mass quantity, this is a good app. There is a search function, as well as many collections curated by Photobucket and its users.

Price: Free

Shutterstock

As with Getty Images, Shutterstock is based upon its website stock photography counterpart. It’s a collection of photos taken primarily by professional photographers, and thus has a fantastic collection. You can search within Shutterstock’s collections, or by title/tag information.

Shutterstock

While the photos are fantastic and can be viewed by anyone who has downloaded the app, without a Shutterstock account it’s severely lacking in a lot of common functionality. If you sign up for a Shutterstock account, you can save and review your favorite photos, but without that there’s not much you can do. That said, if you just need to look at one photo, or peruse quickly, this is a great application.

Stuck on Earth

We recently reviewed Stuck on Earth and found it to be a new kind of travel app that brings you the best places in the world to visit, photograph, and experience. It’s the ultimate app for explorers, photographers, and daydreamers.

Stuck on Earth

It’s a bit of a different way to check out inspirational shots, and even get involved yourself!

Price: Free

Final Thoughts

Well, I think this is a fairly diverse but pretty good collection of photo discovery apps. I’m always looking for more though, so tell me … what’s your favorite?