Compfight | The Edublogger

Finding the perfect image to enhance your blog post can be frustrating and time consuming however there are tools that can make this task faster.

This post explains how to find and add creative commons Flickr images to blog posts. Make sure you also refer to Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts for an introduction to implications of copyright when using images and how to attribute (acknowledge) the original source of an image.

Locating Creative Commons Flickr Images

Flickr is a commonly used image source because the quantity and quality of creative commons images hosted on Flickr increases the chances of finding the image you’re looking for. Read this post for the explanation why most bloggers use images licensed under Creative Commons.

There are several online tools that make searching Creative Commons Flickr photos less time consuming. My favorites are:

1. Compfight

Compfight can be customized to include search of:

Tags terms only or within titles and full text i.e. the photo description
Creative Commons Flickr photos, all Flickr photos or Flickr photos that can be used for commercial purpose

Compfight is extremely fast at displaying a huge number of images on the page. Clicking on an image on the results page takes you to the image’s photo page on Flickr.

2. FlickrCC

FlickrCC is similar to Compfight in that you can customise your search but it also includes the ability to edit images using their in house editor or Picnik (an external photo editor). Their in house editor can be used for:

Adding attribution to the image
Cropping
Adding a frame and/or text to the image

Blogging Images Directly From Flickr

One option for adding Flickr Images is to blog the photo directly from Flickr instead of using your blog dashboard. Besides being a fast and simple option; it also automatically inserts the image attribution for you.

This post blogged from Flickr to my personal blog explains How to Blog an image from Flickr and shows what a post written using Flickr looks like. Unfortunately adding tags and categories to posts written using Flickr does requires you to edit the post from within your blog dashboard. Also I prefer to write blog post first then look for images.

Inserting Flickr Images Into Blog Posts

The easiest way to insert a Creative Commons Flickr image into your blog post is using the image URL and your Insert/Edit Image button as follows:

Locate and copy the image URL for the creative commons Flickr photo you want to use in your blog post.
- To locate the image URL using Internet Explorer you need to right click on the image and then click on Properties.
- For FireFox you right click on the image and click on Copy Image Location.
In your Write Post area click on your Insert/Edit Image button add the Image URL, image description and click on Insert.
If you want align image left or right you need to click on the drop down arrow next to Alignment and change alignment before clicking Insert.
- I normally right align my images.
- To prevent text wrapping close to image I add the number 5 to both the Vertical and Horizontal space areas.
Click on the image and resize to the desired size.
- I normally use 450 pixels wide for my large images.
- Less than 250 pixels wide (mostly 200 wide) for right align images.
Link image to its photo page on Flickr by clicking on image and then clicking on Insert/Edit Link button. This is a requirement of using Creative Commons Flickr images.
Add text attribution near image or at bottom of post (refer to Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts for more information).