How to Find Image Sources For Proper Attribution or Research

There’s no shortage of amazing images online, but that doesn’t mean you’re always going to find the original. So many images you find on blogs and other websites originated from somewhere else. While it may not seem like a big deal, it seriously pays to know how to find the original.

Here’s how to find an image source quickly and easily.

Why It Is Important to Find Image Sources

It’s always handy to know how to find proper image sources online. It won’t just make your life easier when it comes to finding high-quality photos; it could also help you avoid legal trouble.

You Saw an Image and Want to Find It Again

Is there anything more annoying than seeing a cool image online, saving it to your desktop, and then forgetting where you found it in the first place? Worse still, you then have to waste hours trawling through your browser history to find it.

All of this wasted time and effort can be avoided when you know how to find image sources quickly.

You Want to Use an Image in Your Blog Post and Attribute It Properly

Images are vital when writing blog posts. Research shows articles with photos get 94 percent more views than those without them. That’s because nothing puts readers off more than huge blocks of text. Images help break your writing up, make points clearly and improve the reading experience.

However, you can’t just use any old photo you find on the internet in your blog. You have to make sure you are legally allowed to use it and that you can attribute it properly. You’ll need to find the original image source for both of these tasks.

Once you’ve found the image source, you’ll be able to work out whether you’re allowed to use the image (I help you with this below if you’re still not sure), and you can attribute it correctly if you need to.

While it’s very rare for small sites to get into legal trouble for using copyrighted images or not abiding by Creative Commons, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

You Need a High-Quality Version of an Image

Low-resolution images suck. They look bad on your blog, and they look even worse when you scale them up for printed marketing materials — but pixelated images are exactly what you’ll get if you don’t find the original image source.

Why? Because reposted images are usually shrunk to reduce the file size and increase website load times. This is great for the website in question, but it’s not great for you. The original image, on the other hand, is usually much larger in size. Whether you want to use an image in a piece of marketing collateral or edit it yourself, it pays to be able to find the source.