Introducing the "Free high-quality picture search" tool

This article introduces the Free High Quality Picture Search tool which has been added to this website.

Today I've added a new feature to Blogger-Hints-and-Tips.

The Free High Quality Image Search tool is available from the menu bar. It is a tool to help you locate free, high-quality pictures to use in your blog posts or other website projects.

It is based on a Google-custom-search engine, and a carefully selected set of websites that offer images you can use for free on your blog, even if it is "commercial" (ie you have advertising or any other way of making money from it).

The difference between this and the images that you can get from a general-purpose search using the Creative Commons image and multi-media search tool is the resolution of the images that are found and/or their photographic quality.

How to use the Free-image-search tool

• Choose it from the menu bar on this blog, or navigate directly to it at  http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.ie/p/free-image-search.html

• Type a description of the image you want to see into the search-bar.

• Press Enter

• When the results display, click the Image tab, to see what photos are available.
  (Hopefully this step is only temporary, and I can soon manage to have the search-results default to images and still use the tool in Blogger.)

• Use the numbers in the lower-left side to move to different pages in the image-search results.

• Choose an image that you would like to use.

Once you have chosen an image, you can either link directly to if (if the site allows), or download a copy, put it on your own image-service (eg Picasa-web-albums), and use it in your blog.   The latter approach is required if you want the image to be used as the thumbnail for your post.

Copyright

By definition, all images returned by the search-tool should be free-use and so not subject to any copyright rules.

However some do have attribution requirements, and you may need to use image-captions or similar to make sure that these are followed in your blog.

Related Articles:

Finding free photos for your blog, using Creative Commons

Introducing Google-custom-search engines

Summarise your blog-post with post.snippet and post.thumbnail

Copyright, Blogs and Blogging, an introduction

How to add a badge to a blog made with Blogger

This article is about how to add a badge that someone else gives you to a blog made with Blogger.

Sometimes, blog-owners run a blog-a-thon or a similar circle-of-blogs event.

One aspect of taking part is by showing a badge for the event on your own blog, so that your visitors are invited to take part and to view other participants' blogs too.

Usually who-ever is hosting the event gives you the code for the badge, and tells you to install it into your own blog.   Sometimes they even tell you how to install it to your Wordpress blog - like this.

Fortunately, installing a badge to a blog made with Blogger is equally easy.

Installing a badge to Blogger

Decide where you want to put the badge.   Traditionally badges go into the sidebar, but you could choose to put it into the header or footer, into the space above or below your posts, or even into an individual post.

Get the HTML code for the badge.
NB   If the other party doesn't give you the code, or if their code is neither HTML or Javascript, then you may need to make it yourself using the approach described in How to make a Button for your Own Blog.   But 99.99% of the time, they provide it.


Install the code into your blog the same way you would put any other 3rd party HTML or Javascript into it.  

In most cases, this involves adding a HTML/Javascript gadget, pasting the code in, and then positioning it where you want it.   But There are some cases when you will need to edit your template.


Job Done!
Yes, it really is that simple.    A badge is simply a picture, and a piece of code which says "when this picture is clicked, go there"   The hard work is in making the picture for the badge - installing it is usually very simple  (unless you do something complicated and try to put the button in the middle of your post headers and footers.

A thought about copyright

As I've said before, copyright law applies to blogs, just like it applies to all created things.  So of course it applies to badges, and the images used on badges.

However, because you are installing a badge which someone else has provided the code for and told you to use, it's safe to assume that you have their permission to use the image that they have provided on your blog.

But it's probably not a good idea to modify the badge code too heavily - for example to change the size of the image drastically, or to use a different picture.

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Related Articles:

Putting 3rd party HTML into your blog

Copyright, blogs and bloggers

How to make a Button for your Own Blog