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Content Curation How To

Using Google Image Search to Find Original Source

One of the hardest tasks in curation is tracking down the original source of an image.  Even if you start with the original source of an article, the images used in it may, and probably did not, originate with the same author.

To track down the original source, try using Google Image Search to find it.  Its amazing how accurate it is in finding multiple copies of the image on the web.  Unfortunately, it still takes a lot of digging to figure out which one is the original.  The following steps will get you started.

Finally, if you can’t find the source, make sure you use a thumbnail.  Using just a thumbnail, and not a larger or full size image, is good practice and seems to be a way to share an image without knowing where it is from.

  1. In Chrome, you can right click an image and choose Search Google for Images.  Otherwise go to google image search and drag the image into the search box.
  2. A page will open with links to where that image is found. Scan for an obvious source for the image.   Click on it and use the link to credit the image.  If it is a stock photo site, you will often have to pay to use it.
  3. Many times you’ll have to dig deeper, click on the “view other sizes” link.
  4. A new page will open with photo links of where the image is found. Usually the largest image is where the original photo is held. Scroll over the top of the images to see the site info. You may have to click through a couple sites before finding the original source.
  5. Once you find it link properly.
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How To

What happens to all of the Images found by MyCurator?

You may find that your  Media library is filling up with images as MyCurator finds articles for your content curation.  MyCurator not only pulls in the full text of an article, it also collects the images found in the article.

MyCurator only stores one image per article in your media library, usually the first image it finds. All of the other images you see in an article are just links, they aren’t stored in the media library. Still, that may be a lot of images stored if you get a lot of training posts per day.

Fortunately, MyCurator always deletes images for any Training Posts that you do not make into a live WordPress post. Training Posts are automatically deleted after 7 days (you can change this in the Options Admin tab) along with the stored image. So while you may see a lot of images in your media library, it doesn’t grow forever, ending at about your average amount of Training Posts per week.

If you would like, you can turn off image capture by clearing both of the Image capture options in the Basic tab of the Options menu item.

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How To

Using images with a curated post

Images are a very gray area right now. Its clear you don’t want to copy original, ‘owned’ images. But how do you tell? I have come across only a few ‘watermarked’ images that display an owner out of thousands.

If you are properly attributing the original post, then you are also attributing where the image came from if you curated that post on to your site. Anyone following the attribution will see the original image on the original site. At this point I think this covers most use cases and have not heard of anyone having a problem with it. You could even make it more specific by using an attribution link such as “See original post and this image at: ” (MyCurator allows you to customize your attribution link).