An Incredibly Easy Way To Legally Use Flickr Photos
Flickr is a goldmine of images that you can use to spice up your web site or blog posts. But there are some things you should be aware of, so that you can keep it all legal. Now, I don’t want this to just be some boring post about keeping it legal. No, I intend to showcase how you can not only use Flickr images safely, but easily.
Let’s face it, crafting a good blog post or site article takes time. If I can find ways to cut corners, without sacrificing quality, I’ve just saved money. And as far as I’m concerned, saving money is the same thing as making money.
So, here’s one way to quickly, easily, and legally find and use Flickr images in your blog posts or site articles.
First, a quick lesson in copyright issues. Flickr has tons of photos with Creative Commons licensing, which allows you to use them, without cost, but with restrictions. There are various forms of Creative Commons licenses. Generally, I like to stick with the least restrictive, so that I never have to really worry about misunderstanding the license restrictions. The least restrictive license is the Attribution (BY:) license, which means that you can copy, distribute, display, and perform the copyrighted work, as well as any derivative works based upon it, but you must give credit (attribution). In other words, you can pretty much do anything you want with it, including change it, but you must give credit back to the original license holder. In the case of using Flickr photos in blogs, for example, you would generally link back to the Flickr photographer or page it was originally listed on. (Note that the license actually says that you must attribute in whichever way the author specifies, however, in most cases on Flickr, the author doesn’t specify anything. In that case, simply linking back is considered acceptable).
To search for only those photos with the Attribution (BY:) license, just go to the Flickr advanced search page. Type the phrase you want to search for, and then at the bottom of the page, check the following:
__ Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos
__ Find content to use commercially
__ Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon
This will ensure that you choose only a photo with the least restrictive Creative Commons restrictions.
Ok, now you’ve found a great photo to use. The problem is that it can all become annoying and time-consuming to download the photo, upload it to your site, and then create the attribution links, so I went on a search for a way to make it easier. Lucky for me, you can find almost anything on the Internet, and I’ve found a nice way to handle this.
To use this quick shortcut, you’ll need to first be using Firefox, as this trick won’t work with IE. In addition, you’ll need to download and install Greasemonkey, and then install a particular Greasemonkey script, called Flickr Photo Link. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. More Greasemonkey scripts can be found here.
So what does this Flickr Photo Link script do? If you’re logged in to Flickr, it generates a small attributed photo link in the comment box on every Flickr photo page you visit. To post the photo in a blog post or elsewhere, simply copy the generated HTML from the comment box and paste it anywhere you like. Let’s look at an example. I’ve installed the script and searched Flickr for a photo. I found one I liked, and took a screenshot of what the page now looks like since I installed the script. (See below).
See the code that I circled in red and pointed to? Without this script, that code would not be there. Normal Flickr image pages just show an empty Comments box, but this script automatically adds the code shown here. All I have to do now, to be able to use the photo in this blog post, AND give credit to the copyright holder, is to cut and paste that code here. I’m going to do that now, and the result will be below.
See that photo and credit link above? All I did to produce that was copy/paste the code I was provided by the script I installed. That was so easy. Now anytime I find a Flickr photo that I want to use, legally and easily, all I have to do is copy/paste the code I’m given on the photo’s page. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
As you can see, it automatically chooses the Small version of any photo, so if you want a different size, you’ll need to go with the old fashioned route of downloading and uploading. But you can still make use of the attribution code (the part that starts with “from” in the code above).
So that’s my tip of the day for all of you who want to use Flickr Creative Commons photos, legally and easily. Have fun!
Tags: Author, Creative Commons, Flickr, Flickr photographer, Greasemonkey, HTML, images, photos, scripts
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An ebusiness coach, web developer, Internet Marketer, SEO, and all around web geek who makes her living from home doing all of the above.
If you want to use those images in WP, try this wordpress plugin http://www.photodropper.com/add-photos-blog/
Now, see, I’m not crazy about that plugin despite the popularity it is seeing these days. Why? Because it inserts a link back to the photodropper site. Now look, I’m all for getting credit for the work you do, and I’ve even advocated the use of these “bylinks” as I call them in the past, but with Google getting all pissy lately about links, it’s just something I’d rather stay away from for now. Of course, other than that, it is a cool plugin.
…and what happens if the photo gets deleted on flickr? Oops, that just happened with your example…
LOL, Animal, that’s a good point! HA!
i am so confused. where do i put the code. i love the diagram. i wish you had walked through where to put it. i am so new to all of this. i need my hands held.
Hi Olga. When you are writing your post, you are probably in Visual mode. As you’re typing, when you get to the part where you want to include the image, click on the HTML tab to switch to HTML mode. Now just paste the code you get from Flickr right into the post where you want the image. You can switch back into Visual mode if you want once you’ve done that. (The Visual and HTML tabs are located just above the area you type your post into near the upper right edge of that area).