So you are a member of the Flickr community, and want to include a copy of a photo in a discussion thread. This is usually very easy, but sometimes can be a challenge depending on the photographer’s account settings. Here’s how to do it.
The easiest way
If control of the size isn’t important, just browse to the photo’s Flickr page, copy the URL, and put square brackets around the URL in the comment box. Here’s what it looks like, both in the comment box, and in preview mode. Your image will always be the “small” version, but Flickr will automatically display the image, and the image will be a link back to the picture’s Flickr page.
There are two downsides to this method. One, you’re stuck with that size. Two, it only works in Flickr. What if you want to control the image size? Or display a picture anywhere outside of Flickr?
The mostly easy way
1) Browse to the picture, then select All Sizes.
2) Choose which size image you want (usually small or medium), then scroll down to the bottom to grab a link. There are two options down there, but only the top one will link back to the photo’s page, so that’s the right one to use.
3) Paste the code into your comment box.
4) I like to “Preview” to make sure I did it right.
If I had been viewing Medium or Large when I copied the URL, I would have gotten a different size to display. Easy, huh?
Usually that’s it… but sometimes that handy box at the bottom of the page isn’t there. Are you out of luck? No, but it takes a little more work to get the URL of the image and format it to display.
The Hard Way
First, you need the URL. You’re still going to need to browse to the size you want to embed by visiting “All Sizes. To get the URL, begin by right clicking the image. Depending on your Web browser, select the option that will get you that image address. Those options are:
- Chrome: Copy Image URL
- Firefox: Copy Image Location
- Internet Explorer: Properties (which will display a box with the address which you then must copy)
- Safari: Copy Image Address
- Opera: Image Properties (which will display a box with the address which you then must copy)
Next, you have to know a very small amount of html to get your image into your post.
If you aren’t bothered by those pesky rules that say you must link back to the original image’s page, it’s pretty easy. Here’s the syntax:
All you’re adding is in red. Everything else is the URL of the picture. The result is the same as the previous, easy method, except the image is not a link. What to do?
If you want to be a good Flickr citizen, and link back to the image’s page, you’re not quite done. You have to add link code around the image code. Fortunately, that’s not too hard.
First, go back to the image’s regular page, and copy its URL:
Next, we add the link text around our previous code. Here’s the syntax:
- Green text is the link code
- Blue text is the URL of the image’s page
- Red text is the image display code
- Black text is the URL of the size image you want to display
Again, I like to preview before I post it, but it looks pretty much the same as before:
There are other ways to do this, but they do not give you the same control of the image size that it displays.
If you like the clock tower picture, you can find it both on my blog and on Flickr.
