It is very important that only photos and images that are properly licensed and whose creators are given proper credit are used on wikiHow. Using proper attribution is an important way for wikiHow to thank the people who created the images used here; it is also a critical way for to make sure that we have not violated anyone's copyright when displaying images. By following the simple steps below, you can provide the necessary assurances that the images you have uploaded can be used on wikiHow. If you fail to provide proper attribution and licensing information for the photos you use, they will be deleted from wikiHow.

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[edit] Steps

Photos You Took Yourself

Be sure you know how to properly upload images.
Locate the file for the image you wish to upload using the browse button on the image upload page.
Type your name and a sentence indicating that you took this photo in the "Summary" box (see the image below for an example).
Select the license you wish to apply to the image from the pop down list below the "Summary" box. Again, be sure to indicate that you took this photo.
Upload the image only when you have provided the proper attribution and selected the license.

Photos Uploaded From Another Website

Make sure that you have an image that we can legally display on wikiHow without violating copyrights. Unfortunately, almost all the images you find on the internet or on Google image search are copyrighted and are not legal to upload on wikiHow without the photographer's explicit permission.
Look for images that the photographers have explicitly freely licensed or donated to the public domain. Example licenses that we can use on wikiHow include:
- Creative Commons - Attribution License (CC-BY)
- Creative Commons - Attribution - No Derivatives License (CC-BY-ND) - Note we can use these images only if we don't modify the image.
- Creative Commons - Attribution - ShareAlike License (CC-BY-SA)
- GNU Free Document License (aka GFDL, the license used on Wikipedia)
- Public domain - Anything explicitly in the public domain (e.g. US government images, images over 100 years old, etc.)
- Fair use images - It is OK to use copyrighted images legally under the "fair use" provisions in some narrow cases on wikiHow. Legal fair use examples would include screen shots of websites or software programs and some promotional images.
- Many other similar licenses which allow unlimited sharing and modification.
Locate the file for the image you wish to upload using the browse button on the image upload page.
Attribute the image you are uploading properly by doing the following (see image below for an example):
- Provide the creator's name (or user name) and indicate that he or she was the one who took the photo.
- Add the URL for the page from which the photo was downloaded.
- Add any other information (e.g., a title) that might be helpful.
Select the appropriate license from the pop down menu. Note that this license should be the same as the original license selected by the creator of the image.
Upload the image only when you have provided the proper attribution and selected the license.

[edit] Tips

If you use the Find Free Photos feature listed under "Editing tools," all the attribution and license marking is done for you automatically.
Using Google's "Advanced Search" feature, you can limit your search to freely licensed images. However, you should still be sure to check that anything you download for wikiHow has a license that is compatible with wikiHow's CC-BY-SA-NC license.

[edit] Warnings

Please don't put wikiHow at legal risk by uploading copyrighted images without permission of the photographer or copyright holder.
The Creative Commons license for Attribution-Share Alike-Noncommercial is not compatible with our license at wikiHow due to the fact that unregistered users see advertisements, a form of commerical marketing.