Get Images Related To Your Post Content

How to Get Images for Your Content

So now that you have some good ideas of what kind of images to include in your content, here are some tools and resources to get those images.

Eye Catching Photography

The following are great sources for eye-catching photography.

• Creative Commons Images – My favorite resource is Flickr’s Advanced Search to find eye-catching photography. Be sure to check the box to Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content and include a photo credit with the image you use.
• Royalty-Free Stock Photos – If you can’t find what you are looking for through Creative Commons, your next best bet is sites like iStockphoto that allows you to buy a photo for use in your website content and designs.

There are tons of other resources – simply search for creative commons images or stock photography on Google to find them, but the above are a great place to start. Also, if you find a photo you want to use but it isn’t creative commons licensed, all hope is not lost. Just email the owner of the photo / photographer and let them know what you had in mind. You might get a great response!

People Photos

Whenever I need to grab a photo of a person, I tend to go with their Twitter profile photo as it is one they have chosen to represent themselves online. Other places to grab a photo include:

• A person’s Gravatar (if they have commented on your blog).
• The author bio page on their blog.
• The photo on their corporate bio page.

Or, if you prefer, you can contact the person and ask them to send you a photo of their choosing for an upcoming piece of content you are working on. Generally, if you let them know you are including them on a list or a positive review, they will be happy to oblige!

Screenshots

If you don’t have a program like Snagit or similar to get screen captures, then you have some free options to work with.

• Screenshots on Windows Based PCs – I tend to rely on the Print Screen (Prt Scr) button on my keyboard to do a screen capture, then resize and crop it in Gimp, a free image editor.
• Screenshots on Mac OS Machines – If you’re running a Mac, you can use shortcuts such as Command-Shift-3 to take a screenshot and save it on your desktop, Command-Control-Shift-3 to take a screenshot and save it to your clipboard, or use other shortcuts listed here. Gimp also works on Mac for editing your screenshots.
• Website Previews – If you use Safari and need an image of a website, then you’ll be happy to know that Safari actually takes screenshots of websites in .png and .jpg format. In Windows 7, you can find these previews underC:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\Safari\Webpage Previews. You can then edit the website’s capture in Gimp to fit your post.

Windows 7 also has a Snipping Tool that allows you to grab screenshots easily, but I have found those captures are very low quality, so depending on your needs, you might want to use one of the above options instead.