Royalty Free Stock Photos from fotolia

Just because photos and images are on the Internet, does not mean they are free to use for whatever you want them for.  Some people get quite upset if/when you use their images without permission - even if you give them linkage and credit - so it's always a good idea to check the licensing before using.

The people at fotolia gave me a free 30-day trial subscription (5 images per day) to their site so I could try it out.  The site offers thousands, no millions of royalty free images.  The royalty-free license allows you to use images in your projects without limitations on time, the number of copies printed, or geographical location of use.

They offer two types of plans - Pay-As-You-Go and Subscription.  Anyone can sign up for a free account and begin searching for images.  They have a really great search function, and you can search for images by keyword, concept and category, color, and more - to find just the right image.  Fotolia will also suggest similar images or items in the same series, which would be especially helpful if you're doing a project and want the images to coordinate.  Save any images you like to your 'Lightbox' and organize them any way you like - perfect for finding the images you like again!

Once you're ready to buy images, decide what kind of plan you want.  The per-image cost is higher with the Pay-As-You-Go plan, but I think it's better, unless you need a lot of images.  The subscription I had was for 5 images a day, and that meant I had to go back every single day and download those 5 images, and then I had to wait until my time re-set to the next day - and go back again to download another 5 images.  I found that I did not really need that many images, and some days - even though I meant to go and download my 5 images - I just didn't get there.  They have a new monthly subscription plan that might solve that problem since they give you the whole month to download the files you want (you choose the number), and if you don't download them, they roll over to the next month. 

I did download several images during my month's subscription.  I just haven't used many of them.  I am going to keep adding images to my lightbox - because there are some great images there - and if/when I have a real need for a great royalty free image, I'll just buy some credits and do the Pay-As-You-Go thing.

If you're looking for images, be sure to check out fotolia.  If you'd like to sell some images, you can do that too.

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Unlimited Storage on Photobucket

Image via CrunchBaseI used to use Photobucket for a lot of my blogging images.  It really was a great place to store all my images and be able to use them.  Then one day I logged in and found that I had exceeded my storage space.  Photobucket had never actually let me know how much storage I had in the first place or how much of that I was using, so it was a surprise - a very unpleasant surprise.  I tried deleting some images I didn't need any more, but that didn't seem to free up any space.  It still said I had exceeded my limit.

So, I just stopped using it and hadn't logged in for a while.  Until today, when I got a very pleasant surprise - Photobucket now offers unlimited storage.  For free.  Now I can upload, store, use, share, edit, and who knows what else with all my photos and images.  This makes me happy.  I can start using it again for all my image needs.

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Google Doodles Through the Years

Image by pipot83 via FlickrYou know how Google always seems to have a special logo to celebrate holidays and any other special days?  Some of those logos, or Google Doodles, are just plain awesome.

Doodles are known as the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists. Whether it is the beginning of Spring, Albert Einstein's birthday, or the 50th anniversary of understanding DNA, the doodle team never fails to find artistic ways to celebrate these unique events. 

OK, I admit that I never actually looked for them, but I always thought the special Google logos were here one day and gone the next, never to be seen again.  Yeah, I know, dumb assumption - because anything that's ever on the Internet is out there forever, or so they say.  But, anyway, a friend of mine on facebook just shared a link - to all the Google Doodles all the way back to 1998.  I'm not even sure I used Google back in 1998.

If you enjoy the fun Google logos, be sure to check out the Google Doodle Archive.

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Linking with Images

I participate in a couple memes each week, most of the time anyway.  Each week, the host posts a link list, and we all sign in.  Usually you just leave your name and url, but I recently came across inlinkz, a free linking tool that includes thumbnail images.  Instead of just leaving a text link, participants are able to choose an image from the page they are linking to.  I thought it was really cool - especially for photo memes.

Today I visited Linky Tools and saw that they have a new thumbnail Linky that allows the same thing.  Linky Tools actually has a whole list of Linky types to choose from:

• Basic Linky: This is the basic MckLinky List... people leave a title and link it to their blog. Use it for any reason you can dream up. 
• Thumbnail Linky: A thumbnail linky has a collection of image thumbnails instead of a list of text titles and links. Lots of fun! Give it a try 
• Blog Hop Linky: A Blog Hop is a group of bloggers who display the SAME LIST OF LINKS on their blogs, usually with some sort of theme or topic. 
• Picture Caption Linky: 1) Invite readers to leave suggested picture captions, then 2) rank them or choose winners...  
• Contest Entry Linky: Run a contest or some sort of giveaway on your blog. 1) Readers enter their content submissions as per your instructions then 2) you choose winners OR 1st Place, 2nd Place, etc.
• Prayer Request Linky: Have your readers leave their prayer request and link. 
• Answer Linky: Ask your readers a question and let them leave their answer and a link to their blog or email. 
• Question Linky: Have your readers leave their questions for you and a link to their blog or email. 
• Ideas Linky: 1) Ask readers to help you come up with new ideas for a project, event or topic; then 2) rank them or choose winners. 
• Top X Linky: Create Top 10, Top 5 or Top 3 list (from 1-10). 1) Ask readers for their entries for a Top X List then 2) choose and rank the winning entries.  
• Create A Story Linky: Fun! Start a story in your blog post and invite your blog readers to help "write it" by adding on to the end of the story (the list). Use a theme or plot, or just start one and see what happens.

I'm thinking I need to play with some of these - maybe that Ideas Linky, asking for post ideas or something.

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Screen Capture Tools

Giveaway of the Day offered a Screen Capture program today that was not very popular.  I didn't bother to download it, because I've been using PicPick for a while, and I really like it - and because everyone who looked at or tried this one had nothing but bad things to say about it.  The good thing about that is that there were a whole lot of suggestions for free screen capture programs and tools.  I went through all the comments and tried to list them all here:

• MWSnap
• FastStone Capture V5.3
• Screenpresso
• Gadwin PrintScreen
• Jing by Techsmith
• ScreenHunter
• greenshot (I like the little frog on this one, but that's beside the point)
• jetScreenshot
• Screenshot Captor
• Snippy
• and Windows Vista or Windows 7 include a program called “SNIPPING TOOL” to capture items from your screen and store in a folder of your choice.

I haven't tried any of these, except Jing, which I liked but never re-installed after I re-formatted my computer.  I really should, I liked it.  But if you need a screen capture tool, I thought it would be nice to have a list to choose from.  Hopefully something here will work for you.

The Yak for Java

I found this today (Actually, I found a magazine page I had ripped out of a magazine ages ago that mentioned this, so I looked it up.

The Yak Java applet - free kit that allows you to create buttons and animations. It supports sound and up to 100 images per animation. It's supposed to be pretty simple, fast and light-weight. I haven't tried it out, but it sounds like it might just come in handy. (And I'm linking to it here so I can find it again - and I tossed the magazine page out)

Have any of you used the Yak? What do you think?

Free Images that You're Free to Use

Recently I've been using Flickr for the images I need, for websites and blogs. I use the Advanced Search and then, scrolling down to the bottom, choose 'Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content' and, under that, 'Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon.' That way, when I find an image I like, I know that the owner of that image has agreed to let me use it and modify it if I need to to meet my needs. Giving credit to the owner, with a link or a mention, of course. (the image at the left is linked to the original photo page on Flickr)

After reading the article below, I think I will start using Yahoo image search to find the photos I'm looking for on Flickr. It sounds like it will make the whole process just a bit easier.

The main idea is to find images that are free and legal to use, with no copyright infringements. Just because an image is out there on the Internet does not mean that you are free to do with it what you would like, and with so many available under the Creative Commons license, there is no need to. I personally make my photos on Flickr available under CC licensing, and I thank all of you photographers and artists who do the same.

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Make Your Pictures Look Old

I have photo editing software, but I don't always know what I'm doing with it. Sometimes I get a great effect by playing with the filters and effects in the program. Sometimes I don't. Of course, even if my image turns out great, I don't always know how to do it again.

I will be able to make my photos look old any time I want. Not because I figured out all the steps, but because I found this site that does it for me. First, select "English" at the top of the page, unless you read Japanese, that is. Then, all you have to do is select a photo from your computer or the web and click the convert button - and you've got a picture that looks 100 to 150 years old.

Like this:

It really does look old, doesn't it? It even makes the car look old!

No, not really - here's the original:

I think I'm going to have some fun with this site and my Old World Wisconsin photos.


Make your pictures look old. It's fun. It's easy, and it's free.

Add a Favicon to Your Site

Are you tired of that bright orange B (if you're using a Blogger blog) in the address bar and on the tab? You can display your own icon on the browser address bar when visitors view or bookmark your web page instead. It's really simple, too.

• Choose an image you like - ideally it will be very simple because a favicon (short for favorites icon) is pretty small, and complicated pictures don't translate well. It should be an image you want people to associate with your blog.
  
• Upload your image to this Free Favicon Generator, and it will create your favicon for you.
• Then you can either download it so you can upload it somewhere else, or just host it there. They even give you the code to copy.
• Once you've copied the code simply go to your Blogger Dashboard, select Layout, and edit HTML. Paste the code into the head of your page, right before the < /head> tag and save it.
• Now, you should have your very own, personal favicon.

I actually used this Favicons from Pics generator to make the favicon for this blog. If you use this one, you will have to download and unzip the file and then find somewhere to upload it so that you can link to it and use it. Since you can't directly upload the favicon to Blogger, and many photo hosting sites don't accept .ico files, it's a little more complicated.

Here's a great tutorial on adding a favicon to your Blogger blog.

Free Blogger Templates

Once again I am talking about free blog templates. I can't help myself - when I see a blog layout I like, I want to know who designed it, where they found that layout. So, I click. This time I found Our Blogger Templates. They have over 100 free templates available and the instructions for installing them on your blog and adding your own header image. There is even a tutorial for designing your own template. With all these great, easy to customize templates available, I don't know that I will ever need to design my own, but I would love to learn how.

I installed one of the free templates from Our Blogger Templates, created and added my own header image, and customized all my colors. I actually found another template I thought would go with my new header better than the one I originally installed, but I was having some troubles getting Blogger to cooperate with me, so I just changed the colors of the one I had already installed. I wasn't sure I was going to like the 'New' Blogger, but it does make changing colors easy. Most of these free templates say that 99% of the colors can easily be changed, and I have to believe them, because I changed an awful lot of the colors.

I grabbed my header image from Pixdaus. I hadn't heard of it before, but Our Blogger Templates used some images from there for their blog headers, so I clicked and found all kinds of interesting images. I liked the frogs, 1) because I like frogs, and 2) because they look like they're so excited about something that they just can't keep their mouths shut and they 'just gotta share this' - or am I stretching things a bit? Anyway, lots of images on Pixdaus.

When you click template installation guides and instructions on the Our Blogger Templates site, there's a link to more sources for header images. I figure, with enough sources, you're bound to find the right image or template, right?

Where Do You Host Your Images?

That was the question in a forum I visited the other day. Since I haven't settled on any one place or service to host my blogging images, I was interested in what people had to say. Several people mentioned Photobucket and ImageShack. I had heard of both of those, but there was a new one I hadn't heard of called Shareapic.

I started using Photobucket recently when Yahoo discontinued their photo hosting so they could focus on Flickr. One of the options they gave me was to transfer the photos I had on Yahoo Photos to Photobucket, so I took them up on it. I haven't been too disappointed with Photobucket except for the time I was trying to use one of my images as a background for my blog. No matter what I did, it just didn't look right. Then I realized Photobucket had resized the image when I uploaded it, so it wouldn't work the way it was supposed to. One of my favorite things on Photobucket is that I can add an image I find on the Internet without downloading it to my computer first.

I've never used ImageShack, though I have seen their logo around the Internet. You know the one I'm talking about - the little yellow 'bandwidth exceeded' frog that takes the place of the image you really want to see. It doesn't give me much faith in the service. I'd be worried that an essential image wouldn't be available all the time. If you've had good results with ImageShack, go ahead and let me know.

The image hosting I hadn't heard of was one called Shareapic. This one sounds really promising, so I ran over and signed up. They say you can upload unlimited pictures with no size restrictions. They also say they'll pay you when other people view your pictures. Hopefully that means no 'bandwidth exceeded' messages. They also claim one click posting to Blogger, Xanga, MySpace, and more. It sounds like I should be able to use this for all of my blogs. Why no image here? Well, I haven't figured out exactly how it works yet, but I will.