There are so many images online, and so many more being created every day. Some are free, some are royalty free, some have licenses that you have to purchase in order to use the image, and some you just cannot even legally touch.
Are you using images that you have permission to use?
For those who have been in the blogging community for more than a decade, especially the “personal blog” niche, during 2004 through 2007, there were a lot of websites that used celebrity images. Some of these images were “blended” or pics spliced and mixed together in a way that made the image attractive. This was great practice for newbie graphic designers who played with Photoshop or other graphic editors to make their images look great.
Unfortunately, licensing on pictures of celebrities, including actors, musicians, and editors required graphic artists to personally contact the original photographer for permission. Even some artwork, like paintings, and other types of photography were required that the user either ask for permission to use and sometimes even require credit back to the original source/ artist.
Of course, a lot of webmasters were not found of this, but did remove what creative works did not comply.
However, since those years, stock photos, free images, and other types of licensed works have come into play.
For a dollar or more, website owners can use a cool vector image created by another, or perhaps a stock photo of some place relevant to what they are writing about. However, for every person who pays to legally use images that require licensing, there are many more who just take and use on whim.
While the main party to blame is the actual person illegally using an image that requires licensing, Google has also been fairly responsible for this. Think about it.
Go to Google. Click on the images tab. Do a search on an image. When Google displays the results, slowly hover over the first 4 rows and see how many links to stock photo sites come up. It should be a few, especially if you do a search on vector images (any type)…
However, next time you search for an image you need for your website or even graphics… think about it… do you have permission to use it???
Depositphotos royalty free images
This is so important. It amazes me when people assume all images they find online are free of copyright. They aren't.
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It's actually really common to come across bloggers who have no idea of permission concerns with using images on their websites. I really only got savvy on it a couple of years ago after reading a few articles on it.
Google's image search does let you filter by reuse permissions too, which is always handy!!
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Thanks for posting this! Unfortunately, there are many people who think every image online is free and don't bother to read the fine print. Photographers work hard to get the right shot at the right angle and "borrowing" their work is like a slap in the face. There are sites that offer free photos and others that specify how given photos can be used. Of course, if everyone took their own pictures for their blogs, this wouldn't be an issue.
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I never thought of any permissions like that,from next time I would research a bit before implementing any stock images to my blogs or sites….
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I want to echo the above comment on the fact that its so COMMON to see inappropriate image use on blogs and various websites. I see it EVERY DAY. The fact is that people are generally not litigious (or vigilant?) enough to actually seek out and persecute the vast majority of these illegal uses.
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I only use my images and graphics on my blogs or I buy stock photos, this way I am getting a lot of traffic from Google and Yahoo image searches. A good way to receive extra traffic and impress visitors.
I sometimes use free images, sometimes I buy stock images, but many times I make use of the available photos on the internet. I don’t mind watermarks, however, people should not post photos if they don’t want them to be seen.
I agree that we have to use images that has permission…If that would happen to you, would you like it too? Of course not…
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This is a very nice post.I appreciate the information and i will be checking back frequently for more post like these.
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Such and important topic. Glad you talked in depth about it. As a photographer it’s nice to see others discussing image ownership outside of our industry.
Yes, its true… most common mistakes of blogger is that they tend to forget that not all images are free. sometimes I too tend to forget that fact…
Hi Nile nice post, as for me much as possible every time I used images that is not my own I make sure that I will give credit to their respective owners.