A Fresh Look At Finding Free Images To Use On Your Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Graeme Caldwell, Graeme takes a fresh look at finding images to use on your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Words lie at the heart of blogging. The cliché says that a picture is worth a thousand words, and while that may be true in some sense, it's also true that as tools for content marketing and SEO, the success of a blog depends on the richness, originality, and educational value of its written content.

That being said, studies have shown that including rich media can hugely improve engagement levels on most channels of communication, including blogs. There are three basic routes that bloggers can go down when it comes to finding the perfect image to add some spice to the written word: they can create the images themselves, they can license images from a stock image service, or they can take advantage of the many millions of free images available on the web.

Look At Your Options

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Spice Up Your Blogs Content With Infographics

Guest Post - Our host is Montassar Ghanmy, Montassar is taking a look at infographics and how us bloggers can use them to benefit our blogs.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Just like text, infographics can be a good way to present your content. A lot of blogs and websites started focusing on using this type of media to reach and impress audience especially that people are becoming more interested in this type of content with the growth of social medias such as Pinterest and Instagram . Below is a list how infographics can “Spice up” you blog.

- It’s interesting: For most of internet users spending precious times to finish reading one long article is not an option, however making an alternance between text and image is a good way to give your readers a brake and keep their attention.
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Collection Of The Best Screen Shot Image Tools

For me with this kind of blog the use of images and video is very important but not just your standard video and images.I have always relied on screen capture image and scree cast video to make it so much easier to get my message across.Screen capture images are as the name suggests were you will capture an image of whats currently on your computer screen and Screen cast video is were we can record a video following what we are record our actions on a computer.In the next two posts I will be listing a collection of the best tools for screen capture and screen casts kicking off here with screen capture tools.

There are a number of tools you can use for example some tools are built into your browser while others can be downloaded onto your computer.Also options to edit the screen grab and add annotations is important.So we will go through all the options you have so your can get the perfect screen capture tool for your needs.

Screen Capture Built Into Your Computer

For Windows :

Snipping Tool
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Best Free Tools To Compress And Optimize Images On Your Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Salman Farooqui, who takes a look at image compression and the best tools to help.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Image files today are the most used media type to share. However, they are often too large in size to easily share or store. This is where image compression comes to play. Image compression is technique which reduces the image size without significant reduction in image quality. Many people fear image compression because they have a misunderstanding that it is a threat to image quality. Actually, image compression is of two type - Lossless and Lossy.
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10 Tools You Can Use To Create Awesome Infographics

Guest Post - Our host is Jamaica Sanchez, infographics are a great way to convey a message or tell a story here we have the 10 best tools to make your own infographics.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

As cliché as it sounds, a picture is worth a thousand words. Now infographics are trending than ever. The boom of website using graphics to convey further information has astounded many. Less people want to read lengthy content with only plain text, especially if the article is about statistics and behavior comparison of different groups and concepts. Infographics help readers to visualize and enhance their understanding on the idea or message given by the article. In this post, we will share 10 tools that you can use to create awesome infographics.

10 Best Infographic Tools

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5 Free Image Sites To Keep Your Site Legal !

Guest Post - Our host is Sebastian Cowie, here Sebastian lists 5 Free Image Resource Sites To Enhance Your Blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

It’s all too easy to head on over to Google Images and search for your target key phase, then poof! There we go, a brand new image for your site or latest blog post. Unfortunately, using these images will more than likely result in infringing upon someone else’s copyright. Not only that, but the artist or photographer will have worked hard to create that image and deserves attribution for their creation.

We’ve all been there; someone decides to copy your blog layout or latest post, removes your attribution and claims it for their own. So why is copying someone else’s image any different?

Fear not though friends, there are ways to get your hands on high quality images which are fit for most purposes without having to spend a penny!

Be aware, some authors still require attribution but a simple e-mail is usually all it takes to legally use an image.
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Twenty Must-Have Online Image Tools For Bloggers

Guest Post - Our host is Goranka Radojcic, in this post Goranka goes through the best online image tools.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

The Web has definitely gone visual. Pinterest is the latest craze and trend. Various surveys and reports show that the site is a great source of traffic and incoming links to content creators. And the popularity of visual content is still growing. Savvy bloggers turn this visual trend to their advantage.

Here is the list of twenty free and nifty web tools that can help us to create more appealing imagery for spicing up our blogs and sites.
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Quick Tip - Fix Images Breaking Out Over The Sidebar On Blogger

An Email I received recently for a Blogger user complained photos they added to posts were overlapping onto the sidebar.I facet I have seen this on a few blogs and have helped people with the problem.Fixing it is easy and only takes a minute.All we do is add a snippet of Css that makes sure photos and images can only be at maximum 98% the width of posts.So even if you added a huge image this code will restrict it from breaking out of the post body, Lets do it !
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5 Top Tips For Optimizing Images For Google Search

Guest Post - Our host is August Drilling, August takes an in-dept look at optimizing your images for search along with tutorials for WordPress and Blogger.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

If you haven’t noticed, a new visual trend has hit the web, and Pinterest is a prime example of this image-based trend in action. High quality, engaging images receive tons of love on Pinterest, generating loads of traffic back to the originating website.

Besides Pinterest, though, even images found in the classic Google Image search provide great potential for increased site traffic. But, similar to ranking well in Google’s traditional search, your images must be optimized to win this extra traffic.

So to capitalize on the image-based trend, lets go over the top tips for optimizing your images for Google. It’s quick and easy, so let’s get started.
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jQuery 5 In One Image Effects For Your Photos On Blogger

Bloggers are always using images and photos on their blogs so in this post we will see how you can add five different effects to those images.The neat thing about this is you just have to add some jQuery and Css to your template (We make it easy) then you can easily add from 5 hover effects to add some spice to your blog images.

Lets look through the effects and you can also check out the demo to see it in action.

The five effects will be :

Effect 1 - Popout, this is a basic pop out effect on hover the image will pop out from the page.
Effect 2 - SliceDown, The image will have an dark overlay and on hover a slice effect reveals the image clearly.
Effect 3 - BoxRandom, The image has a light overlay and on hover the image is revealed by boxes randomly clearing.
Effect 4 - FoldLeft, Once again the image has a light overlay and this time on hover an accordion fold effect reveals the image.
Effect 5 - RainGrowReverse, This time on hover the image is revealed from corner to corner.

Add The Image Effects To Blogger

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Add Pinterest And Other Bookmarking Buttons To Images In Your Blogger Posts

On Spice Up Your Blog I have tutorials for lots of Social Bookmarking gadgets.We have posts showing how to add Social Bookmarking gadgets at the top of your posts, below your posts, scrolling beside your posts and in fixed positions.These are of course for readers to bookmark the content in your posts.But with so many Blogs having a focus on Images how about having the bookmarking icons appear on the actual images you have on your blog ?

People love to share images and the success of Pinterest has served to confirm this point.So in this post I have a tutorial to add social bookmarking icons from AddThis to your images, the icons will only appear when readers hover over the image and they appear with an overlay.

The buttons we are adding to the images are for Twitter, Facebook, Print, Pinterest, Google + and the Add This button which will cover all other services.

Check out the demo below then follow the tutorial.
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Make Your Blog Sticky With Images, Aesthetics and Content

The stickiness of your blog is one of the most important measures of its success. You may be able to drive a large number of visitors to your blog, but unless the visitors stick around and engage with your blog closely, and return repeatedly, you may not find sustainable success in the highly volatile and mercurial world of blogging.

Creative Use of Images

Many bloggers commit the cardinal mistake of over-emphasizing on the quality of written content while ignoring the importance of images in the process. Images help to arouse the curiosity of a new visitor, and get him or her drawn into your blog’s great content. An average blog visitor’s attention span is very limited because the choices for readers are too many out there in the free world of blogging.

Therefore, unless you make a creative use of images you may end up with a blog that appears drab, unexciting, and visually unappealing. Many visitors to such a blog may make a quick exit without waiting to check the quality of its content, if the design and appearance of the blog does not appear inviting, refreshing, and somewhat rewarding.

Images are easily obtained through sites like iStockPhoto, Jupiter Images or Shutterpoint. Tools like Zemanta can also help bloggers find images that fall under GPL and Creative Commons licensing.

Encourage RSS Subscriptions

In a highly competitive world of blogging, it has become very important to include an RSS feed and invite the readers to subscribe to the blog. This will help to create a loyal blog readership because the blog posts will drop directly into the subscriber’s mailbox. RSS feed is one of the biggest reasons of the success of prominent blogs around the world.

Tools like RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 are built right in to WordPress and Blogger so you can get a feed set up rather easily for your readers.

Smart Blog Design

Bloggers who are keen to enhance the stickiness of their blog for the long haul cannot afford to ignore blog design. New visitors tend to judge a blog within the first few seconds of their visit. If they find the blog confusing, cluttered, or difficult to navigate, a majority of them will not wait to stick around to read too much of the content even of the content that was read was marvellously written. If the placement of ads takes precedence over the placement of content, it can put off many visitors and kill the stickiness of a potentially impressive blog (see Myspace).

Clear Blog Branding

Your maximum effort should be invested in creating a great homepage that draws visitors into the blog. A new visitor should be able to know exactly what the blog is all about almost at the first glance itself. Blog design, title, headlines, taglines, logo, and navigational elements should all work to communicate effectively about the blog’s content.

Compelling Content

The backbone of any sticky blog, ultimately, is the quality of its content. A blog that makes outstanding promises at the outset and delivers little in terms of content is likely to fizzle out soon. The content must be relevant and sharply focused to the tastes and preferences of the target audience.

Furthermore, it is critical that the content must be updated regularly. Each time the blog should have something new and exciting to offer to the readers. In a fast-paced world of blogging, the blogger cannot afford to take it easy or become complacent about dishing out and providing new content consistently.

While any one of these techniques can help keep your readers engaged longer on your site, a combination of them will help keep your readers focused on what your site has to say to them and will develop a much stronger community around your blog.

By Guest Author -Jon writes about Promotional codes and discounts for different coupon blogs that share Jupiter Images coupon and iStockPhoto promotional codes. Currently, he writes a coupon site that offers the latest Jupiter Images coupons and iStockPhoto promotional codes to help people save money on stock images.

How To Turn Off Or Disable The New Blogger Lightbox Feature

In the last post i brought you news of how Blogger had just added Lightbox to all Blogger Blogs.While lightbox is a neat way for people to view images in your posts it has not been to every ones taste.I have received a few comments and Emails asking is their a way to turn off light box or disable lightbox.This morning i spent some time trying to work a simple line of Css to override lightbox but to no avail.However i did come across a hack on another blog that does the job perfectly.

This hack is from the blog Code from an English Coffee Drinker (Love the title make sure to check it out) and it works a charm.I also have a video tutorial at the bottom of the post.

Override Lightbox On Blogger Blogs

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Lightbox Image Overlay Effect Is Now Default On Blogger Blogs

Back in May this year i showed you how to add a jQuery Lightbox Image Overlay Effect For images on your blog.Today the Blogger team have made a version of this default on all blogs.Previously Images when clicked opened as a seperate page, with the lightbox effect images pop up with the background darkened also thumbnails of other images within the post are listed below.So just upload images as normal and they can be viewed in a brand new way.

Introducing Lightbox, the latest in a series of Blogger updates aimed at giving you an improved and modernized blogging experience. Lightbox is a whole new way to interact with photos. When clicked, images now expand into a shiny new overlay that displays them at their full size for optimal viewing.

Click the images below to see the effect in action.

Another great new feature for Blogger, check out the Blogger post on lightbox Here.

Drop your comments and questions below.

How To Add Stacked Polaroid And Other Cool Effects To Images

There are hundreds of image editing and resizing services available online so finding a quick and easy option can be hard.One service i use regularly is Dr Pic as it has just a few quick editing options and a re size option with an instant preview.The stacked Polaroid effect is probably the one i use most and i have received a few Emails asking how it's done.So i have created a short video to show you how to use Dr Pic to edit and re size your images.
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Adding Simple Stylish Css Captions To Images On Blogger

In this blog tip we will look at a quiet simple way to add captions or descriptions to the images used on your blog.On Blogger there is an option when you click on an image uploaded to the post editor to add a caption.This adds the caption below the picture using a table.However with just a few lines of Css we can have the caption across the bottom on top of the image with an neat opacity background.You can also change the colors of the caption to suit your blogs design, You can see some examples in the demo below.
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Blogger And Wordpress Spectacular jQuery Image Zoom Effect

A few weeks ago i published a very popular post featuring an Amazing jQuery Image Zoom For Blogger.That effect allowed you to display an in dept zoom in a container beside images.In this post we have the same in dept zoom but this time it appears within the image in whats called inner zoom.So if you uploaded an image to your blog that's displayed 200x200 pixels the zoom appears within that space.Lets look at the demo so you can try it out.
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jQuery Lightbox Image Overlay Pop Out Effect For Blogger

Recently we have been looking at the images you use in your blog and making them display better and more interactive.This has included an Image Zoom Effect and Featured Image Slideshow.In this post we will cover perhaps the more popular image plugin.The lightbox plugin really is a 'Must Have' for blogs that use pictures in their posts.At the moment when a user clicks on an image you uploaded on your blog they click through to the image URL page which is just the image on a blank page.With this lightbox effect when your images are clicked they smoothly pop up into a container in full size with an optional description.If you have the effect added to more than one image users will have the option to scroll through each with next previous buttons.Lets look at some Demos.

While testing this i had to make a few demos so i kept two for you to check out, just click on the images in the demo posts.You will see the next and previous buttons when you hover over the image when popped out.
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An Amazing jQuery Image Zoom Effect For Blogger

Many of the latest posts have been looking at Css effects and Image effects so in this post we will continue with the images but bring some jQuery into the mix.If your a beginner thinking whats he talking about don't worry we will have all the steps set up for simple copy and paste.The effect we will achieve in this post is very cool.When you add an image to your blog you can allow users to hover over that image and a larger version appears.Users can then move the cursor around the small image and see it zoomed.The demo below will show you exactly how it works.



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Add A Simple Css Bump Effect To Your Blogs Images

We all like images effects and adding some style to the pictures we use in our blogs posts.Some effects can be quiet elaborate (I have the very cool light box effect just about ready to publish) but sometimes a simple hover effect looks great.In a recent post i showed a rollover effect with some social icons changing one image to another on hover (we may look at using Css Sprites in future), in this post we will make your images simply Bump !
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