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Archive for images

Avoiding Image Copyright Issues

April 4th, 2016

Most people know that it’s easy to find images by searching Google Image Search. But not all the images you find through such a search are legal to use. Here are some tips and tools for avoiding copyright issues.

When you find an image that seems perfect for a page or post of your website – say, a mouth-watering picture of pancakes for that article about the pancake breakfast fundraiser – look at the website where the picture is being displayed.

Obviously, if the picture is from the IHOP website, it’s going to be copyrighted. But sometimes, other people have violated copyright law to use IHOP’s photo, so just because it’s on someone’s blog doesn’t mean that it’s fair game.  You (and your organization) are responsible for the images you use on your site, and the fines can be thousands of dollars.

A very helpful tool is TinEye.com, a reverse image search. On their site, you can either upload an image file, or paste in the URL of the photo that you found on Google Image, and TinEye will show you all the places on the web where that picture occurs.  Then you can look for indications that the image might be copyrighted. For instance, you should be able to see if an image is a stock photo being sold on a service like istockphoto.com or gettyimages.com.

One helpful tip is to sort your TineEye.com search results by date, displaying the oldest results first. This should give you some indications about where the photo might have originated, but should not be taken as definitive, since stock photo sites might have been reorganized and changed their URLs, so you might not see this particular photo appearing on the stock photo site until later in date.

TinEye Makes browser add-ins for all the major website browsers, which makes searching images even easier. Once you have the added installed and activated, you only need to right-click on an image and then choose “Search Image on TinEye”. The search results will open in a new tab or window.

Have questions about copyrights for images? Leave your question in the comments.

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Optimize Images

March 23rd, 2015

picmonkeyPhotos and image files can be large and take a long time to download.  When you use really large files like this on your webpages, then it slows down the loading of your site for users.

Making your site faster to load is not only about not frustrating your users– Google and other search engines use site speed as one factor in how high your site will rank in searches.

Be sure to “optimize” images (make small for the web) before you upload them to your site.

You don’t have to be a Photoshop wizard to do this!  One great (and free!) tool for doing this is Picmonkey.com. You don’t need to create an account – just upload, make changes to your image, and download it back to your computer.

To quickly and easily make your image optimized for the web, choose “Resize” on Picmonkey, and make the width (in pixels) of your image somewhere between 200px and 300px. The ratio should be locked, so that the height also will diminish.

When you send the image back to your computer, choose the lowest quality, aiming to get your image sized down to 30 kB or less. Even a fairly large photo on your page should be more than 50 kB.

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Tip for Preparing Photos for a Slide Show

June 10th, 2014

SlideshowYou want to have an image slideshow on your website. Before you can add those images to the slideshow plugin however, you need to format the images so that they are not only optimized for the web, but also so that they are exactly the same size in width and height.

If you are a novice at working with images, here’s a tip for quickly creating a group of images that are all the same size:

Use blank PowerPoint slides, and put each image for your slideshow on its own slide in PowerPoint. Crop and otherwise edit the image on the slide, paying attention to how the slide looks in the PowerPoint show, not any “overhang” of the image.

When you have all the images into a PowerPoint slideshow, and are satisfied with how this show looks, in PowerPoint click on File – Export. Choose “Change File Type” and scroll down to choose JPEG.  This option will export every slide presentation as its own .jpg file, all of them being exactly the same size.

You may still need to optimize these images for the web, and this is most easily accomplished by resizing all of the images to the same smaller width that you need in your slideshow.

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Photo Permissions

March 9th, 2014

photo takingIdeally, we would get a written permission from every person whose photo appears on our website. Practically speaking however, most churches focus on getting the consent of parents and guardians for posting images of their children.

The easiest way to do this is to include a short notice or opt-in on registration forms for church school or youth groups in the fall. The language could be something like this: “Pictures of my child taken during church events may be used on the church website and/or social media.”  This will help you identify parents who may have reasons for not wanting images of their child to be used.  You may want to give parents the option to approve all-group images (a posed group photo of all the kids at a particular event, for example), even if they opt out of photos more generally.

When holding a public event,  you can post prominently in a public place near the entrance that photos or videos that are taken at the event may be used on websites, social media or advertising. Be sure you take photos of the notices to document that you have posted them.

You should have your own attorneys vet the statement you use, but here’s an example of the text that has been used:

“Upon entrance to [name of event], today, [day of week, month, day, year], you hereby give [name of hosting organization] and anyone authorized by such, the irrevocable right to use your name, picture, portrait, photograph and/or video clip in all forms of media, and in all manners, including composite or distorted representations, for advertising, trade, publicity, social networking or any other lawful purposes, without further notification or compensation. You waive any right to approve the finished product, including written copy that may be created in connection therewith. All video, raw footage, and photographs shall constitute [name of hosting organization]’s property, solely and completely.”

This may not solve completely the issue of folks who need to not have photos posted, but at least it goes a little way toward alerting folks that they may need to be vigilant.

How do you deal with photo permissions in your organization? We welcome your comments and stories!

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