It is important to include images with your posts.  People are so very visual. Like me for example, I read headlines, look at pictures and maybe read captions before I determine whether or not an article is going to hold my attention enough to read the balance of the article.

Similarly, when I look at Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and blog posts, my attention is drawn to the posts with the images.  I don’t know if that is the right side of my brain taking over or the fact that people are so much more visual these days.  Always being bombarded with TV, computers, billboards, smartphones, imagery has become even more important than before.

In a recent article from Dreamstime about the new Google Image Search, the discussion focused on the image search function. I thought I would illustrate this for you.  I searched the word “Conundrum” (#1 image) to find an image to use for this article.  Not seeing what I really wanted, I created the image above.  Not everyone has the software, the skills or the desire to create an image to go with their blog article.  Many people don’t have the resources to purchase images. (There are free resources – read another Time2Mrkt blog article on this.)

When you select an image, you are given three choices – View Page, View original image, Image Details (#2 image).  If you view the original image, the full size image appears in a window. This gives the view the ability to save (#3 image) (download) the image without paying for it.  The companies that sell their images use watermarks to prevent you from using the image without paying, but what about the company that actually bought the image to use on their website or marketing materials?  Do they need to watermark their images so that you don’t use them?

Going directly to the site, gives you access to the image as well, but at least the company gets the “hit” to their website and you might see something that you might need from that company. You can see in the #4 image what the image looked like on the website. And I added a link back to them here for the courtesy of using their image.

The last image (#5 image) in this article represents what can also happen with images that you find.  I am not positive which image was the original, but one of them was manipulated with editing software to change some of the words.

Being aware that photographers and graphic designers have worked long and hard to achieve their goals, it is a conundrum how to fulfill your desire to have an image but respect the rights of the people and companies that have posted the images for sale and/or purchased them for their company branding.

One person I know, had images that he had grabbed on his website at some of his images.  It caused some legal issues.  Make sure that you won’t be getting into any trouble.

What is your favorite image sources?