How to use photos with Blogger: Part 1

Well, my lovelies, 12 weeks into this captivating little bloggy caper and I’ve learnt quite a few tips and tricks from fellow bloggers about photos. I read a lot of blogs every day and what sets the best apart is often the quality of the photos posted. I’m no expert but I thought I’d share what I've learned with you just in case they might be useful (oh, and I don’t have any financial connection with any of the companies or websites I mention). I’d also love you all to jump right in and let me know if there’s a better way to do things or there’s a fancy website with tricks we should know about. Let’s collaborate. Does that sound fun? Okay, let’s go!

Storing photos on your computer

1. Let’s start with the basics. Once you have downloaded your photos from your camera to your computer’s hard drive, find where they’ve been stored. My PC stores mine under 'My Pictures'. Mac users, please feel free to contribute here as I have no such expertise!

Hmm, this MacBook looks pretty fancy

2. I have connected Irfan View to my photos. It’s free, basic and quite straight-forward. There are a multitude of other programs you can use to manage your photos - look here, here and here for comparisons.

3. Just in case I lose some photos from my blog, I have created a separate folder for storing them entitled ‘Blog’. Maybe use your blog’s name – just make it easily recognisable as you’re going to be using it often now.

4. Now you need to sort your blog photos into categories so you can find them easily. I have created sub-folders such as ‘books’, ‘symbols’, ‘Sydney’ and so on.

Uploading photos from your computer

1. Okay. So now it’s time to upload your selected photos to Flickr. It’s a free and brilliant image and video hosting website. I find it really user-friendly. Just follow the prompts to set up a Flickr account.

2. Now, click on ‘Upload your first photos’. That takes you to step 1 ‘Choose photos and videos’. Click on that and it will take you to your hard drive directory. Click on the sub-folder with the photos you want to upload. Select your photo. If you want to upload multiple photos at the same time, hold down ‘shift’ while you left-click to select the desired photos.

3. Now click on ‘Open’. That takes you to ‘Upload to Flickr’. Check the privacy boxes you want. I usually make photos private first as you can make them public later. If you make them public first, as soon as you’ve uploaded them, anyone using Flickr can see them. I’ve had a man in Brazil pounce on my photos and save them as favourites within seconds of my uploading them which made me feel rather uncomfortable. Now click ‘Upload photos and videos’.

4. Once the photo has uploaded, click on ‘Add a description’ (if you can be bothered!). If you’re really organised, you can use the description tags to sort your photos. Then you can have a fiddle around with Flickr and sort your photos into sets and collections. This makes them much easier to find.

5. Oh, and you can have so much fun with Flickr, joining groups of fellow lovers of French style or calligraphy, for example. You can see photos from all over the world and save the best ones as your 'favourites'. It's a very pleasant timewaster!

Editing your Flickr photos in Picnik

1. This is where it gets more interesting. Go to photo editing site Picnik and register. It’s free but I have upgraded to the ‘Premium’ membership which costs $US 24.95 a year. I think it’s well worth it for all the extra features you get.

2. Click on the ‘Library’ tag and then ‘Connect’. You should now see all your Flickr photos. Double left-click on a photo to edit it. I tend not to use ‘Auto-fix’ as I want more control – it’s up to you.

3. Now comes the fun part – editing! You can rotate the photo, if needed. You can also straighten it up if you want by tilting the angles.

To crop the photo, I tend to use the ‘Original proportions’ drop-down option. Click ‘OK’ when you’re happy with the cropping.

Fiddle around with the ‘Exposure’ and ‘Contrast’ sliders until you’re happy with the balance – you’ll be amazed at how much this can improve your dark photos, in particular, giving them definition.

With ‘Colours’, increase the 'Saturation' to bring out the depth of colours. Be careful not to overdo it or the photo will look distorted. Sliding the ‘Temperature’ gauge to the left increases the blue tone and to the right, the yellow.

You can also fix any ‘red eye’ problems.

4. Once you’ve finished your editing, save the photo back to Flickr. Select your privacy settings and I usually check ‘Replace the old file’. Now if you check in Flickr, you’ll see your edited photo. Don’t forget that the original version of your photo is stored on your hard drive.

Having fun with BigHugeLabs

Now let’s have some fun with BigHugeLabs. This free site calls itself ‘the home of Flickr toys’ – the two sites integrate seamlessly.

1. Register with BigHugeLabs first.

2. Link with your Flickr account.

3. Then choose your toy!

My favourite is the Mosaic Maker where you can easily make your own photo montages.

Here’s a sample mosaic I just whipped up in under a minute, using some of my favourite ‘wrapping’ photos.

Photobooth produces a strip of photos just like the old-style version.

I used Blog Header to make mine (even though I use Blogger and not Wordpress).

You can go for the Andy Warhol-effect at Pop Art Poster.

There are so many effects to choose from – enjoy!

4. Once you’ve created your special effect photo, save it to your relevant hard drive sub-folder.

NB Don’t forget to back up your hard drive regularly. An oldie but a goodie!

Other photo editing programs

Of course, there are a multitude of other programs available for purchase such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel PaintShop. Here is a comparison of 10 software programs on offer. Maybe some of you clever graphic designers (waving to you, Janette!) could suggest the best on offer, based on your experience.

Finding images for your posts

Free

As well as my own, I use photos I find on Google Images, making sure to credit the author. To save a photo, just right-click onto ‘Save picture as’. A box will then appear which shows the photo’s format. I usually only save JPEG, JPG or PNG formats (see here for an explanation of the different formats). Rename the photo and save it to your relevant hard drive sub-folder.

What would we do without Mr Google?

I usually have a link back to the source website, like I've just done above, not just the Google URL. Is this the right way? How do you handle this tricky issue? I’d love to know if there is a better way – all suggestions welcomed!

User-pays

I’m really happy with iStockphoto which has an enormous range of photos, illustrations, videos, audio recordings and flash images. You have the choice of pay-as-you-go or subscription plans. I use pay-as-you-go, purchasing a number of credits with my PayPal account (or you can use your credit card). I find the ‘X small’ size photo is sufficient for my blog needs (and it’s also the cheapest). Once you purchase a photo, you download it into a sub-folder on your hard drive as discussed above. Your download history is also retained on your iStockphoto account page, together with the images, in case you ever delete them from your hard drive.

I’d really love to hear any comments you have on photo editing, sourcing and crediting. Have I left anything out or is anything unclear? Let me know and I’ll do my best to rectify it. I’m learning on the job, just like you!

In my next post, I will discuss uploading photos into your Blogger posts, how to frame photos in your posts and a range of other brilliant sites such as Photobucket, Pinterest, Polyvore, ShopStyle, Stumbleupon, vi.sualize.us and We ♥ it. I can’t wait!

[Edited on 25 April 2012] Picnik closed on 19 April 2012. I am trialling some replacements to see which is the best!