I love magazines, photographs, images and big words. I have a wall covered in all of my favourites but because the web is a whole new resource of inspiration and I see so many images I love each day I never know what to do with them all. I have been testing out a range of ways to save these for my own purpose for ages. However whatever tool I use there still seems to be a fundamental problem with images online and the lack of credit for the original source.
I used to save my favourite images to a folder on my desktop, but this gets a little tedious, and has no real use for me as I rarely look at them afterwards. i’ve wanted to find a better more organised way to categorise and browse them so I’ve been using two image bookmarking tools, vi.sualize.us and Imgfave for a while now. Both offer slightly different functionality and have pros and cons.
Initially I thought vi.sualize.us would be my favourite because its usability and design mirrors delicious but the more I use Imgfave the more I like it because it allows you the look and feel of a blog without having to go through the hassle of setting one up.
I tried using a Tumblr blog before these bookmarking tools but I wanted a much quicker process. I love Tumblr because the blogs I subscribe to feed my addiction for glossy magazines on a daily basis. I like that it makes it so easy to reblog and add notes to an image, however this often credits the blogger and does not always lead you back to the images original source. (so frustrating) there is nothing worse than looking for the original artist and coming to a Photobucket sign up screen! I just wish people would state (whenever they can) who it is!
Imgfave offers some great additional tools too, it allows you to create collections; I’ve created a Fashion collection where I add all my favourite looks in one place for me to then browse really quickly. Plus there is a widget for your blog, really simple integration with Friendfeed and Facebook integration being developed.
However there is no search functionality or additional tagging so even though it credits where the image is being bookmarked from (similar to a reblog within Tumblr) you don’t have an option to edit this with the actual artist. I’m using vi.sualize.us too because it gives you the option to credit the artist. Sometimes if I manage to find the original artist of an image I have found in Tumblr I will bookmark it within vi.sualize.us and then add it to Imgfave.
But unlike taping my favourite images to my wall or my collection of neatly stacked magazines there’s no online version where all artists are being credited. I guess its still down to users making sure credit is given whenever possible. Hmm
