Image attribution…

Have you ever been browsing the web, news, and seen a really cool image? And then held your finger on it long enough for the “save image” to come up on your device? I do it all the time. But sometimes I look back on my photo stream and think “Where did I get that? How can I get permission to work with that image?”

Beyond photos there are patterns, quilting designs, all this STUFF which these days goes far beyond an occasional recipe photocopied from a library cookbook. (Yes, I have done that… )

I think a lot about copyright… image attribution, and it’s probably the main reason I’ve stayed away from Social Media for so long. You’ll see that any images I post are watermarked, I took the actual photos. One source of information that I LOVE is a podcast called Just Wanna Quilt which discusses copyright and lots of quilting thrown in. Or quilting with some copyright thrown in…

My personal opinion is that we should credit makers and inspiration sources and all of the hard work that others have done to make your work what it is. Here is a post from NZ Textile artist Charlotte Scott on crediting artists work. One thing I often see missed is credit for the designer of a pantograph or computer based quilting pattern. When was the last time you saw that aspect acknowledged on the artists statement at a Quilt Show?

I haven’t reposted other peoples images, except for this one… (on Instagram), with the credit embedded into the image. You can read the article associated with it here.

But I have come up with a convoluted way to save the info about a picture I like so that I can reference it later. It’s only a 16 step process so should be really easy to get the hang of. I haven’t tested it with images on social media, just news and web articles that show drama, like the amount of plastic birds ingest, extreme weather events, beautiful scenery…

So, here it is. assuming you’re working on an IOS mobile device…
1)Touch image long enough to bring up the save image option and save it.
2)Select and copy the text underneath the image.
3)Go to your photo stream and open the freshly saved image.
4)On your picture, activate the edit function.
5)On the bottom you’ll see some options, you want the circle with the three dots that means “more”. Push it. Actually, just touch it. It’s a touch screen.
6)You’ll see a lot of pens and coloured dots. Hit the + sign on the far right. It gives you options, choose “text”.
7)A box will come up on your image saying “text” in a text box.
8)Touch it, it will give you more options, choose “edit”.
9)Touch the now editable text box, and options will come up including “paste”. Remember how you copied the text back in step 2? it should now appear on you image. If you’re like me you’ve avoided touching anything with the finger you used to copy it… in case it falls out.
10)Push the keyboard off the screen and you’ll still have the pens and colours, select a visible colour. I choose white.
11)Choose your font size using the big and little A’s on the far right bottom. Use the slider to get the font size how you want it.
12)Move the text box to you desired position on the screen by dragging it with your finger.
13)Touch the done icon on the top right. And then the bottom left. You end up with text in the image like the albatross pic above.

Sit back and admire your handiwork safe in the knowledge that in 6 months you’ll be able to find the source of you image! YAY!

Now, surely there must be a better way to do this. You’d think that if I can figure out watermarking I could use that for this, right? I probably could, but I like my preset, and don’t want to use three or four apps. What I really want to know, is, can someone please develop an extra tag on that original save button that says “save with caption” PLEASE? Or tell me about an easier way to do this?

P.S. It was really hard to find images for this post…