How To Source & Embed A Royalty Free Image From MorgueFile

An image is worth a thousand words, as they say. In this issue, I’ll show you how to source a royalty-free image from MorgueFile.com and embed it into your blog to showcase those “thousand words”.

Why Use Royalty-Free Images From MorgueFile

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There are a large number of royalty-free stock photography websites available to choose from. Why should we use images from MorgueFile.com? Here are a few compelling reasons why:

01. Free License: MorgueFile states on their home page “Free images for your inspiration, reference and use in your creative work, be it commercial or not!” This means using MorgueFile alllows you to take back control of your royalty-free image budget, instead of spending hundreds or thousands over time at other stock photography sites.

Personally, I have an account at iStockPhoto.com and really enjoy the comprehensive collection of media available. But I’ve personally experienced spending hundreds of dollars worth of credits for a single promotional video. If you can source appropriate images from MorgueFile, it’ll save you from spending alot of money in this area.

02. Commercial Use Freedom: As you can see with the image above, you’re free to remix the image and use it for commercial purposes without attribution to the original author. This freedom in their licensing gives you control to use their royalty-free images with massive freedom.

03. Help Me, Help You: MorgueFile has made it simple for you and I to “Crop & Post” an image in a quick hurry. And I LOVE saving time! Their “Crop & Post” is a very convenient and powerful method which I’ll showcase below. Once you learn how to use this, you’ll dig it too!

Concept Of Using Royalty-Free Stock Photography

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According to Wikipedia, stock photography is the supply of photographs licensed for specific uses. It is used to fulfill the needs of creative assignments instead of hiring a photographer.

Stock photography offers a photo buyer the ability to use an image in an unlimited number of ways for a single license fee.

“Free” in this context means “free of royalties (paying each time you use an image)”. It does not mean the image is free to use without purchasing a license or that the image is in the public domain.

But in this issue, using MorgueFile allows us to use IMAGES FOR FREE, without purchasing any license to use it. Cool huh?

FLOWCHART USING MORGUEFILE

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Step 1: Go To MorgueFile.com

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Step 2: Input Keyword To Search

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Step 3: Filter Search

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Instead of viewing multiple pages of images, I prefer to filter image results per page to 144. This allows me to view many more images in one page view.

Step 4: Click Desired Image

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When you roll your mouse over the images, it’ll reveal itself in a mini pop-up. When you’ve decided, click the image you want to use.

I’ve chosen this image as this is the result of the tennis balls after I’ve “crushed it” on the court! <wink>

Step 5: (Optional) Download Image

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As you see in the flowchart, you can either download the image to upload to your blog, OR use MorgueFile’s “Crop & Post” feature, which I’ll showcase next.

If you prefer to keep the image on your desktop, click the green “Download” button now.

Step 6: Click “Crop & Post”

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Step 7: Crop Image To Desired Size

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(1) Click and drag corner points to crop your image to your liking

(2) The width and height measurements will be revealed to the bottom left

(3) You can use the sliding scale to fine-tune your image scale

(4) If you want to lock the size of your image, check this “Lock size” checkbox

(5) When you’re ready, click the “Finished” button to complete

Step 8: Copy HTML Code

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(1) This is the code to copy for your blog

(2) If you’re prefer to link to this image, copy this URL

Step 9: Add Image To Blog Post

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Step 10: Smile At Your Brilliance

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Crushin’ It With MorgueFile

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You can use MorgueFile’s images and their “Crop and Post” feature for both your blog and html websites.

If you prefer to retain the images on your blog’s host, simple download it from MorgueFile, upload to your host and embed in your blog post.

Simple and effective, eh?

Would you use this for your blog? Appreciate your thoughts and feedback ;-)

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I'm so happy you talked about Morguefile! I have been loving morguefile.com for a couple years. Although library is still missing a few common subjects, it is quickly growing into a real competition for the costly sites.

Great opportunities. Especially this cropping. I know that www.photl.com has partial downloading as well. Its so easy to handle, just choose the necessary part and download.

Hi Sherman

Thanks for sharing this, I tried to use the site but it's thowing up an error, I'll try again but just wondered if you get the same thing or is it just me!!

Thanks again
Andy Phillips

Sherman, thanks so much for this resource... I had never heard of morguefile until today. Cool tool.

Hey Sherman dude, this is an awesome pick...

I too was getting fed up paying a fortune to istockphoto, but I never heard of morgue file, and the crop and embed functionality is way cool!

By the way, what happened to the half-hour-huddle, it was inspiring. Is it still going on?

Cheers
James

Hi Sherman

Thank you for this insightful tutorial. I have an account at istockphoto.com, I go there to get all the images I need for my sites. I've never heard of morguefile before but I will definitely got there first now, it will save me a ton of money.

John O'Hara
United Kingdom

I have used and loved morguefile for a couple of years. A recent redesign musta moved a lot of stuff , 'cause I lost MANY images in several blogs I manage. In addition, seems like the library is significatly smaller.
The crop and size functions work great on the site. AND I recommend at the very least, after you crop the photo, open the image URL.then save that image to upload. The download and uploads are smaller and faster

Kerch, thanks for your feedback. Great point. Typically, I download from image sites, then upload to my own blog. In MorgueFile's case, I download after cropping ;-)

I Love it! Never heard of Morguefile before. Great find. The only Caveat to using their crop and embed link is that if they one day go Buy Buy... so do your images.... otherwise... WAY COOL DUDE!

Very good point, John. Downloading the images (for 'keepsake') is definitely a wise alternative if one is concerned about the services' longevity ;-)