How to Properly Utilize Free Images and Sourcing them the Right Way (Practical Steps) | by @fredquantum

Introduction

Dear community members, I hope you all are doing great today. It's my pleasure to be here again to put down a tutorial that will ensure you don't have any issues as regards the use of images in our community and on Steemit at large. I hope you will have a great time reading this piece of an article today.

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_{Designed with Canva using Free Image | Free Double Arrow Vector}

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The Use of Images

Proper utilization of images in your articles is an integral part of what makes your publications a complete one without any trace of blemish. This tutorial was necessitated based on the fact that a few users have been noticed to have been victims of this even after many months/years of operating on Steemit, I have seen this both in new users and old ones.

The second category is quite interwoven with the first where users failed or don't know how to properly source images. It dents users' work and has caused problems between authors and Admins/Mods whereby either party believes the other is incompetent. Without wasting much of our time again, let's see the things you are going to learn in this piece,

• How to use the search engine for free images.
• How to check for the type of license on the images.
• The proper way of sourcing your images.

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How to Use the Search Engine for Free Images

You can use the website of free images directly if you know them or use the search engine. We have a few numbers of search engines each popular to a particular region while some are global, you can use anyone you are comfortable with, in this tutorial today I will be using the popular search engine, Google to show the process of getting free images. Let's see the steps involved below.

• Navigate your browser to Google Images. Below is the screenshot of the landing page.

_{Google Images Landing Page | Source}

• In the search field above, type in the image you are looking for. Let's say "computer" is the type of image you are looking for, type it in and search.

_{Search- Computer | Source}

• It's time for us to filter the images to ensure that we are getting a free one. From the results, click the filter icon and under usage rights, select creative commons (this is where you can find free images without complications).

_{Usage Rights | Source}

• We have filtered the images. The images that are free to use can be easily located. But that's not all, we have to check the type of license on the image, you will learn about this in the next section.

_{Filtered Images | Source}

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The Types of License on an Image

We are starting from where we stopped in the previous section, the results of our filter don't imply that these images are free to use, No! There is a need to check the types of licenses of the preferred image to see if there are other things expected of a user to do before using an image. Things that we would look at here are;

• No Copyright.
• Attribution
• Share Alike.

No Copyright

Images with no copyright imply users can easily use them free without attributes even for commercial purposes. This is very rare to see if you have utilized the search engine for your images without proper filtering. Let's see how to check the copyright details on an image.

• Click on the image of choice and on the next page, click on the license details. We are utilizing one of the images from the last example.

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_{No Copyright | Source}

Note that, even though images like this say no copyright, you should endeavor to properly source it in your articles here on Steemit.

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Attribution

There are free images that require that you adequately attribute the creator with proper credit, mentioning the name of the author, the title of the image, the link to the image, and so on.

Having all those information included in your article can really stuff things up as such, there are ways you can do it by including the proper link to the asset which enables readers to see all information about it. Let's see an example of an image that requires an attribute.

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_{Attribution | Source}

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Share Alike

Share Alike is another important condition under the license of an image one should watch out for, this simply implies that if a user has remixed or modified an image, such user should endeavor to share his/her contribution under the same license of the original image. We can say this is a way of ensuring that the initial aim of the creation of the image is maintained regardless of the remix or modification.

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_{Attribution and ShareAlike | Source}

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It's very important to put all the license-type highlighted above into proper consideration to ensure you have utilized a free image in the right way. Remember, there are many other free image platforms, for example, Pixabay, Pexel, Flickr, and so on, ensure you have checked the type of license on each of them before utilizing them in your articles.

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Proper Sourcing

I have seen and read many articles that have not properly sourced their images. A few times, the address of the search results (on the search engine) was added to the image and in some cases, the address of the image still from the search engine's page is added, both methods are wrong. Let's see how to source the images properly below.

• Search the image you are looking for, and filter the result to get free image.

• Select a preferred image and on the next interface, visit the website.

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_{Addresses of the images above are not the right ones to be added for proper sourcing}

• We are at the actual source of the image now, Google has only crawled in there to fetch the result for us, as such the address of the website is the valid one to be added to an image for proper sourcing.

_{Actual Source of the Image- Source}

Utilizing this proper sourcing would have catered for the attribution conditions on a free image while you caption the image creator's name (a person or a website). The link will lead to the actual source and reveal all details about the image to your audience.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, it's worth utilizing free images on your articles and sourcing them appropriately, you don't want the articles you have written for hours to be condemned because of image-related irregularities. I'm glad to have been able to share this piece with you and I hope you will make good use of it in this community and others where you blog regularly. Thanks for reading.

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Written by:-
@fredquantum