We all know how important aesthetically pleasing images are for clicking an article. We are also aware how hard it is find the perfect image for your article. We wanted to simplify the process for you. We are going to provide you with useful tools for how to create better images for your articles as well as how to properly find fair use images online.

Tools to create more aesthetically pleasing cover photos

We have found you some free tools that you can utilize via mobile and/or desktop to create better images to support your article. We believe this can help with bringing more traffic to your articles!

Pablo & Canva- Desktop friendly

Pablo is a desktop friendly website that allows for you to enhance your photographs for free! You can add text to these photographs, enhance the lighting, add effects, etc! We find the add text feature to be awesome if you want to add extra emphasis on your photograph of a title or keyword.

Canva is another website for photo enhancement. This website is a start-to-finish design program perfect for non-designers. You can edit photos and even create fonts for your website and photographs here. We thought the font feature was super cool. You can mesh two fonts together to get a mix of both as a final result. Other features include: infographics, logos, quotes, collages, cover photos, profiles and resizing.

Mobile friendly AND free apps for photos- Picstitch & Snapseed

Pic Stitch is a fabulous mobile friendly Apple app that allows for you to collage photos together. The app gives you a bunch of different templates you can use to collage photos together. You can simply collage two photos for the effect of a 'before and after' (similar to image below) or you can collage eight photos together-- its up to you!

Snapseed is another mobile friendly app for Androids. This app allows you to save and share your favorite photos, perfect any photo fast using tools and filters, and tune any effect with precision. We are sure that you Android users will love this app!

'How to guide' on how to find fair use images

A lot of you have been having trouble finding websites that provide fair use images. We have compiled a guide on what websites to use and where to find quality fair use images for your articles.

Blasters cannot use images in their articles without verifying that they are not copyright protected. Some of the images in the Blasting News library may not be free to use, so it’s important to check before you add them to your article.

The best practice is to find a fair-use image online and credit it properly. The tips below, as well as this video, will help you find a great image for your article that is legal to use.

NOTE: Images found on Inquisitr, CNN, ABC, E News, Bravo, NBC, or any online news/entertainment outlet cannot be used — these photos are all copyrighted images from Getty, AP, etc.

How to find free images

YouTube: You can use a YouTube screenshot in your articles. Search for the topic you are writing about on YouTube and take a screenshot of the image. Caption the image and add the following credit adding the YouTube username in the blank space -- [Image via _________/YouTube screencap]

Pixabay: For general images that are not show-related, try Pixabay for free images. Credit this way - [Image by Pixabay]

Flickr/Creative Commons and Wikimedia: There will be specific crediting rules for each photo.

Make sure to follow the crediting rules exactly and add the credit next to your caption in the photo.

WhiteHouse.gov - great for political articles as all government photos are free to use. You may also use photos from the official White House Flickr account. Credit: [Image by WhiteHouse.gov] or [Image by (photographer’s name/Official White House photo)

Google Images - There are free images available on Google, but you must filter the results under the advanced image search tab. Select “free to use or share” under the usage rights drop down.

Watch this video below for easy step-by-step instructions.

Lastly, if you want to use Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube videos within your article to help beef it up, you can simply with the embed codes incorporate them into your article.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED