Image by Beesnest McClain on Flickr
which is on my mind recently since there'll be an exhibition about it at the Fitz in the autumn.
So I'm very happy with using Flickr. I am less happy, however, with using images in Blogger. I have two problems which I'm really struggling with:
The length of time it takes to use images from other websites. So far, every photo I've wanted to use comes from a website. In an ideal world, I click on "Add an image", then select "website address" and insert the URL, and a few minutes later, an image appears. However, I've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and nothing appears, so I've had to download every (or nearly every) single image I've wanted to use so far, in order to upload it from my hard drive instead (which takes seconds).
Captions. I want to credit the people who took the photos I'm publishing, I really do, but why is it so complicated to add a credit in Blogger? I tried following various instructions on help pages, but it involves an understanding of HTML that I really don't have. I lose my place very easily in the code, but I feel there needs to be a better way of adding a clickable caption than by just taking the text, shrinking the font and centring it underneath a central photo. Ideally I want a caption to be part of the photo so that I can have a photo and caption on the side of my text, but my experiments have been messy at best - as you can see!
Diana,
ReplyDeleteWhen uploading an image from a website, you have to use the precise image location, and not just the URL of the webpage. So right click (if you're using a PC) on the image and then (if using Firefox) click on 'copy image location' or (if using IE) click on 'properties' and copy the location given in the new dialogue box that appears. Then paste this location into the space in Blogger and the picture should appear.
It's worth nothing, thought, that doing it like that can be considered back internet manners. It's called hotlinking, and each time someone looks at your page, the image is retrieved from its original location afresh. This can cause high levels of traffic for the source page's server, which might be unwelcome. Also, if the source moves/renames/deletes the image it will disappear from your page.
As for captions, if you use Blogger in Draft - http://draft.blogger.com - instead of normal Blogger, there's a 'caption' option when you insert pictures.
Hope some of that helps!