Week 9, Thing 16 - Flickr

Photo by Muffet on Flickr

Yes, it's a gratuitous wool picture!

After completing Thing 16 you will have ...
... learned how to download and reuse images for your library presentations, posters and website.

Why Flickr?

What makes Flickr so useful for libraries is that many images are licensed for reuse under Creative Commons, a licensing scheme designed for the social web. Unlike professional photographers, many Flickr users don’t make a living out of their images and are happy for others to make use of them. Best of all, you don’t even need to sign up for an account to reuse images from Flickr: you can search for Creative Commons-licensed images and download them straight away.

There are many websites that sell professional quality images for a fee, but in general, the standard of images on Flickr is more than adequate for library purposes. If you are doing some really upscale expensive marketing you might want to consider a site like iStock, but there's usually no need.

The Extra Thing this week is looking at the Creative Commons licensing, so I strongly suggest that you read it if you think Flickr will be useful. But the golden rule is simple, if you can't establish otherwise, assume all images online (not just on Flickr) are copyrighted and therefore cannot be used.

Ok, so let's get started

Go to http://www.flickr.com/. The best way to start (and not fall in love with a copyrighted photo that would be just perfect) is to use the advanced search.

Click the search button on the top right of the page. When the new page loads, hit advanced search to get lots more options.

Enter your keywords, then scroll right to the bottom and check the box that says 'Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content':

Hint: I probably don't need to tell librarians this, but consider your keywords, and the possible variations carefully, particularly if you are looking for a more abstract concept, like an emotion.

Photo by mrwalker on Flickr

Look what my search for 'angry' turned up!

Run your search, find an image you like, and double-check the conditions under which the creator has licensed the work. You can find this under 'Additional Information' on the right-hand side (you'll need to scroll to the bottom of the right-hand menu).

Clicking on 'Some rights reserved' should allow you to see clearly whether and how you are allowed to reuse the image.

Right-click on the image and select a size. Usually the picture as you see it is medium, the large or original sizes may be huge, but if so they will be a good resolution if you need say a backdrop for an A3 poster.

Now either select 'Download the Medium 500 size of this photo' link (or other as applicable), or right click and select Save Picture As...

Choose a location and filename for your image and click on Save. Since most creators ask that you attribute their work, a useful practice is to save the image with the creator's name as the filename, then you won't forget it!

Uses for images ...
... are endless. Add them to your presentations, use them on posters and flyers to engage with your students, put them on your website and blog, even find your online avatar for Twitter, blogging etc - most pictures include a square 75x75 option that's perfect.

Photo by doug88888 on Flicke

Hmm, do I want the world to think of me as a yellow frog?

What if I don't really 'think visually'?
Use a free photo editor to overlay text onto your images, or go for word art instead: Wordle and Tagxedo allow you to upload strings of text or tags and create tag clouds. And don't forget Lightshot could come in handy sometimes too.

Optional extras:
If you like the look of Flickr, create an account by clicking on 'Sign Up' at the top of the page. NB: you'll need to create a Yahoo account, which is a totally separate login from your Google account.

As a registered user you can upload your own photos, or take the opportunity to contact users whose work is not licensed under CC to request special permission to use an image.

Flickr is also great because it is structured in 'sets', effectively photo albums, which tend to be themed. There are also 'groups' where people upload photos on a theme. If you press the 'Explore' button at the top of the screen you can see how these work, and whether they are useful to you.

If you can't quite find what you're looking for on Flickr, you could also try Stock.XCHNG which works in the same way as many commercial sites but for free and with lots more Creative Commons-licensed material.

Some of this material is from Emma Coonan's 2010 Cam23 post on Flickr remixed under Creative Commons licensing.

Week 3, Thing 5: Screenshots - no more tears.

Sometimes we want to use fantastic pictures in our blog posts, something that really encapsulates what we're saying

  by  sally_monster 

When that's what you want, something fantastic from flickr usually does the trick. Sometimes we have to depict things that are a little more mundane, like showing how your iGoogle looks, so how do we make the decidedly un-wow a little bit more, well, wow?

Screenshots, they're simple, eh?

It's true they are as simple as you want to make them. At the most basic level you can hit Shift + Print Screen, open MS Paint (other products are available...), Ctrl +V, edit, save your picture then upload it onto your blog. Simples, as the talking meerkat says. Simples indeed, but also incredibly faffy, especially if you have to do a lot of them and the quality can be poor. The solution is to try something a little more sophisticated.

LightShot- the little black dress of addons

Whenever I install a browser I like to pimp it with all my must have addons. Some of these work very hard for me, others decide how pages will display, one even keeps me on the light side by replacing content from the Daily Mail with pictures of tea and kittens. But if I had to strip it down to a handful of must-have addons, Lightshot is my irresistible little black dress- simple yet sophisticated.

A screenshot of my simples image search

LightShot is available as an addon for Firefox and Chrome, it appears as a purple feather in the corner of your toolbar. When you want to take a screenshot simply click the feather. The screen will grey slightly, which is your cue to click and drag to surround your subject. Release the mouse button and your screenshot is confirmed. From there you have a handful of options:

• Save your shot to your computer
• Copy the shot
• Edit it there and then
• Print your shot
• Upload it to the web to share

Using LightShot is quick and easy- ideal if you are taking lots of screenshots, and the nature of the tool means you can select just the area you want to show, saving all that fiddly editing in MS Paint.

Selecting just one image from my search

Saving the images to your computer is the ideal way to use LightShot to add screenshots to your blog; you can also choose from a range of web-friendly formats, meaning you'll never have to settle for that grainy bitmap ever again. If you want to save screenshots or text/images you've clipped from the web, you can use the quick share twitter and Facebook options, or upload it to the Lightshot page where your image is given a unique URL.
 
Wait, there's more?

There sure is! LightShot is available as a stand alone utility that you can download directly onto your desktop. As well as capturing and manipulating images from the web, you can take a screenshot of anything on your desktop, save it and use it as a standard image object. That means you can place it in an email, shrink it for a Word document, or invert it in a slide show. Again, simples. Check out this video to see how easy it is.



If you haven't yet added screenshots to your post, why not try the LightShot addon for your browser. And if your appetite has been whetteted there's a whole range of free image capture tools for everything from simgle images to video.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for browser tools, skins, addons and extensions. You can find everything you need to 'pimp your broswer' here- Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera. Take some time to explore and share!