Keeping your blog interesting is not limited to writing great content, you also have to lure readers with eye-catching images that go with each blog post. These images, often called featured images, can catch one’s attention and encourage them to read the entire article.
That’s why choosing the right image to go with your post is important. It creates intrigue that your audience will find it hard to resist reading your article.
Although it’s an important task, choosing a featured image for each of your blog posts can be time-consuming since there are a lot of photo sources on the web.
Luckily, there are helpful WordPress plugins that help you search for images that can be used for your blog post without leaving WordPress.
These plugins are designed to look for stock photos that have Creative Commons license for use on blogs and web pages.
What is a Creative Commons license and what does it do for me?
Creative Commons is an organization that helps individuals share their creative work legally.
A Creative Commons license allows an owner of an image to specify which usage of their image they allow and which ones they don’t. As an end user of images, you should choose a license that allows you to use an image for your blog legally, with the consent of the image owner.
In short, you avoid any legal trouble for you and your blog when you use images with the right Creative Commons license.
Best WordPress Plugin To Find Free Images From Dashboard:
1. PhotoDropper
PhotoDropper uses Flickr to search for images with Creative Commons license, a feature that allows you to use the image in your blog for free. After installing the plugin, you will see a balloon icon on your post editor toolbar in WordPress. Click on this to begin searching for an image.
You can then select the image you want and click “Insert to Post”. This automatically saves and adds the image to your image library, and you can either insert it into your post or set as featured image.
Download Photodropper WordPress plugin
2. ImageInject
ImageInject uses Flickr and Pixabay to search for free photos you can insert to your blog post. The plugin’s menu is found on the bottom of the text editor in WordPress. You can type the photo you’re searching for in the search field and you should get a decent list of images right below it. What I like about ImageInject is that it lets you set an image as a featured image by hovering the mouse pointer at a photo and clicking “Featured Image”.
Note that this plugin also adds image attribution details and links to the end of your article when you select photos to be a featured image. The links appear next to the image when you insert it into the blog post.
Download WP Inject WordPress plugin
This handy plugin gives you access to Creative Commons images from Pixabay without any need for image attribution. You can search for photos from the WordPress text editor toolbar, where you can click on the Pixabay icon. This brings up the search window where you can type the keyword for the photo you need. You can filter results according to photo type and orientation.
Hovering over a photo allows you to select a resolution. This action uploads the photo to your media library and you can insert it into your post or set as featured image from there.
Download Pixabay image WordPress plugin
Which WordPress Image plugin should you choose?
There’s no fixed answer to that question. It would depend on how you use images and which features are important to you.
Each plugin in this list have their pros and cons, and it’s up to you to determine which best suits your needs. In fact, there’s no reason why you can use two or more of these plugins to get the best possible image for your blog post.
Just be careful that these plugins don’t affect one another’s functionality. The Foter plugin, for example, did not work when I had other photo search plugins installed.
However, if you want to edit your images beforehand or they need to be a certain resolution to fit your website’s theme, then using these plugins may not be to your benefit.
Conclusion
By now, you probably know the importance of images for your blog posts. It’s important to find the right ones so your blog post is more enticing for a reader. However, you don’t want to spend too much time on searching for photos. These plugins save you time and help you find the best photos that the Internet has to offer. Also, read:
- How to find images for your blog using Flickr
- How to find blog images using Google image Search
- Websites to find free images online
Do let me know how you are finding free images for your content? Are you creating it yourself? Stealing it from Google? Or using one of above Image finder WordPress plugins? Let me know your answer in the comment section.
awesome post Kim. i found it very useful for my blog. i have tried various plugins but your are the best ones. especially i love photo dropper. and m using it. thanks for the article.
Finding images from Dashboard of WordPress was a big problem for me before. Your WordPress plugins are the best and they are working for me great. Thanks for sharing!
All five WordPress plugins are good for exploring images and useful to put images in our blogs under creative common license. A creative blog without images can not attract the readers. Thanks for all the good ideas.
ImageInject is the one i am using, Looking up for the photographs is very easy from these plugins, Thanks a lot.
Nice plugins. And also there is also this wordpress plugin called Grab and Save.
It also grabs image from the www and allows you use it on your blog without the stress of uploading.
I tried photodropper , but why it shows ‘photo by’ text at the end of article and it can’t be removed while editing the post
Very useful!
I didn’t know about the existence of these plugins.
I search for images on Google image search and always search for largest images. That allows me sometimes to use some area of the image and don’t infringe author rights.