Top 5 tips and sites for 'free' images, Thing 10. Simples!

Where do you go to get visual content that is free to use? Free as in you don't have to pay, and free as in you are allowed to use it...

My top sites and tips are:

1. compfight.com Thanks go to Emma Coonan for pointing out this little gem. Set Creative Commons to 'only' at the top of the page to be sure of getting reusable content
2. Images from Microsoft Office Clip Art is passé I know, but this site also has some great photos and backgrounds. It is easy to search by category, or refine your search using check boxes.
3. Wikimedia Commons a huge database of freely useable media files which you can also add to yourself
4. Imagecodr.org ImageCodr will generate ready-to-use HTML code for your web images. Takes the pain and hastle out of HTML code, licenses, attribution etc., etc,...
5. Just search cleverly! Try a Google image search Then refine an advanced image search under 'usage rights' to pick up content that is labled for re-use. Same goes for Flickr Creative Commons where you can search under specific licenses

Simples!

An amble through Flickr brings me to a highland cow and Thing 9

Oh goody, goody, goody! This is the Thing I've been wating for: Flickr. I luuuurrrrve photography and images and have had 'join Flickr' on my to do list for so long that it changed from 'join Picasa or Flickr' to just 'join Flickr' as this giant of the image world has slowly taken over over.

So far I have only used Flickr as a search engine for creative commons images for use on websites, so the full functionality of the site is relatively alien to me. I also haven't been very good at following the destructions, I mean  instructions, for each Thing on the Cam23 blog so this presents a good opportunity for me to follow the rules for once and look at something with fresh eyes...

...I got as far as 'Try one or more of the following searches' and I was away, lost in my own thoughts. Then I realised I had too many thoughts and would have to start writing this post before it became a novel.

So, here goes. I will take you through my Flickr amble step-by-step and think out loud as I do so...

Destruction 1: Go to www.flickr.com and, without entering text into the search box,
click on ‘Search’
All ok so far, I get the main search screen with a blank search field. Doing well I think, so award myself with a cup of tea...


Destruction 2: Try one or more of the following searches...
Hmmm, I'll go for a place I want to visit and enter 'Lake District' and search under 'Everyone's uploads'. Not a good move. Takes ages. Tea goes cold.
Try again and narrow the search down to 'Ambleside'  . Much better: get 25,474 results in a couple of seconds.

Leave destructions and do my own thing...
Sort results by 'interesting'. That looks, well, interesting. How do they define interesting? Are images tagged that way? No idea, let's see... oh, there's a photo of a highland cow that catches my eye. What's that got to do with Ambleside?  (can't show you the photo here as 'all rights reserved' but I can link to it: Highland cow by Lune Rambler

Explore the little 'i' information button that's part of the thumbnail image. Oh, that's cool. Brings up a lightbox with extra info, including tags and I can see some of the tags, but not all of them as there is a '...'

... to find out more... click on the thumbnail of the picture to drill through to the bigger picture (no pun intended!). When I pass the mouse over the big image I can see that there is a hotspot over the cow's face and I am invited to 'give me a happy face'. OK. I will. Click on the mouseover and am taken to another user's Flickr site. I have no idea what that was about as I was expecting the cow to get a cartoon smiley face. That would have been quite fun. Maybe it is some kind of viral marketing? Answers on a postcard please...

Next I decide I want to explore the tags for this image a bit further. Mais, ou sont les tags?? I have to scroll down quite a way past all the sets and the 'plus-signed' folders on the right-hand side (really don't know what they are and look annoying to me) to find the tag list. 30+ tags. Excellent. A photographer after my own heart; see previous post on tagging. 

This is good, when I hover over the tags I can see who added them. Mostly the photographer, but also other users who seem to have put the photo into some kind of folder, or put it forward for an award? E.g. 'PlatinumHeartAward'.

Again, I don't know what that's about. I will have to do some more exploring and sign up to put my own pics on there.

Scrolling down a bit further, under the tags, there is some interesting equipment information. I can click through to stats about the camera, great for a photo-geek like me. I can also see the individual properties of the photo. Exposure, aperture etc. etc.  **rubs hands with glee**.

Having just bought a new digital SLR I used Flickr to see which camera  SirCam was using. I much admire his photos so was interested to see what equipment produced such good shots. I did in the end go for a Canon camera and was highly influenced by Flickr photos in this choice. Fickr is good for camera research. You can even see how popular a certain model is when you click on the camera in the 'additional information' section of an image (see above).

So, all that remains is for me to put my new camera into action and sign up for a Flickr account. Watch this space...

End of amble.

A picture says a 1000 words, or, tips on adding images.

Being a visual person I immediately set out to add images to my blogger blog. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be and I got rather frustrated (see post 'things 1 & 2 iGoogle and others'). I tried to add images from both my PC and the Web and although the image popup loader was telling me it was done, nothing  appeared. Nada, diddly squat, zilch. I couldn't work it out so called upon the more experienced Ange Fitzparick for help. Here are a couple of  pointers that came to the forefront. Hope you don't have to go through the same hair-pulling as I did!

1. Check your post editor settings
Under the settings tab and Global Settings, make sure that you have the updated editor checked. The blogger default setting seems to be for the old editor for some reason. This old version really wasn't playing ball for me and I think Google are gradually phasing it out so why it is the default is anyone's guess. Switching to the new version is definitely recommended.

2. When posting an image from the web
Don't do as I did and try pasting in the URL for the whole webpage where the image is located (DOH!). It won't work as you are pointing to a page not an image and the image loader will just go 'no, not doing  that'. You need to either bring up the image in it's own tab by right clicking on the image and choosing view image. Then copy and paste the URL from that tab which should end in an image file type such as .jpeg, .gif. or .png.  OR, even quicker, right click on the image and 'copy image location'. Then paste in the URL box of the image uploader.

Hope this helps. Happy image posting!