Posterous Quick Tip! Paste a URL to an image and get it on your blog.

Here's a new little feature we just added, by popular demand. You can enter an image URL on its own line anywhere in a post, and we'll expand the image. What's new? Now we automatically download/host it too.

To do this in your web browser, just right click the image and choose "Copy Image Location". Then paste it into your email or new post editor window.

So this... http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/funny-pictures-cats-eat-a-watermelon.jpg

Becomes this...

The same magic also happens when you use the Posterous bookmarklet. It's a special bookmark that lets you grab things from pages, and images get pulled down so you don't have to worry about hotlinking, which is frowned upon in the blogging world.

If you're wondering if you can paste a whole bunch of urls in a row-- you can. Just make sure each is on its own line, and we'll do the rest.

Sharing images from the web on your posterous just got easier. Questions? Fire us a line at help@posterous.com.

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Posted by Garry Tan

Jun 18, 2009

mirl said...

This is great--thank you!

Tom Davis said...

I like cats!

Richard Session said...

It's really easy to see why I chose Posterous. It just keeps getting better.

ravi said...

Very cool, but the flip side of hotlinking is copyright issues. I presume you have thought through those.

Daniel said...

Nice, but it appears to still be hotlinking the image.

brad jackson said...

Thanks Garry and Sachin. This is a great feature. I love the bookmarklet also.

Garry Tan said...

Daniel -- nice catch -- fixed =)

Ravi -- ultimately it's the content creator's job to make sure you only post photos that you have a right to post.

Ola said...

You amaze me with every single feature.

Aviraj Saluja said...

This make things so much easier. Good one, G & S!

Jun 19, 2009

Nicholas Chhan said...

Posterous keeps getting better and better, thanks alot! Can we allow people to edit a post and upload images via the web editor? Then eventually have a manager to manage all uploaded media so we can properly manage our hard disk usage.

Nick -- definitely. We are on it. =)

Marco F. said...

Nice addition! But I'd really now like to see templates and such ;-) (heck, make it premium, I'm happy to pay for that)

Brett McGuire said...

Waaayyyy cool and useful

Rebekah said...

This is what I love so much about Posterous ... things keep getting better, and the new features are always really USEFUL ones..

Thanks!

I do see a bunch of good suggestions in the comments here though (c;

Stefan Grothkopp said...

That are great news! thanks a lot!

Peter Efland said...

Great! what made me choose Posterous over Tumblr is the speed of innovation. Good work!

Robin Nystrom said...

Very handy! Thanks to everyone at Posterous for evolving the tool.

Zafarali Ahmed said...

I prefer dragging and dropping the picture into the email body.

Suz E. said...

This is so great! I have never seen anyone else do this before.

Kathy Johnson said...

Awesome! Thanks!!

@Garry: fair enough. As long as we can still hotlink, that's not an issue. I am comfortable hotlinking to an image. If the author of the image does not want me to hotlink (s)he has technical means to prevent that, and I feel no guilt. Since most images on my posts are such links (though I never just hotlink, but include surrounding text, captions and ownership identification), I am more comfortable with fair use via linking, whereas "borrowing" the image for upload would be crossing the line. That's just specific to me of course, and I do not at all expect the good folks at Posterous to be my nanny when it comes to being a lawful user.

Napoleon said...

Nice! Keep up the good work. Posterous rocks!

Dana Duvauchelle said...

even cats like something sweet every now and then !

Rich Keough said...

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you very much! You guys obsess on how to make whats already great even better.

hahaha - I love the tone in which posterous speaks to me "We'll stop emailing you when new comments happen on this post. Cool?" -yes posterous its cool...very very cool : )

Fabrizio Ceccato said...

it's still hotlinking here, am I missing something?

Jun 20, 2009

If you're using gmail, we're finding that if you just paste a raw URL in rich text mode, it will auto-expand to the IMG SRC tag, which pre-empts our expansion / downloading.

The workaround for now is to just use plaintext.

Yep, I am using Gmail. Thanks for the answer and keep up the wonderfull work, you're just great!!!

Jun 22, 2009

Just sent an image link using outlook 2003 (plaintext). What's the expected result? I see the image in my post, but it links to the original. Is that the way it should work?
http://post.marcof.net for the post (top one)

Marco, Fabrizio -- just fixed a bug in our email parser that should fix this. Let me know if it doesn't -- garry@posterous.com

maurizio codogno said...

(let's try again mangling the URL a bit)
That's awesome! Just a nitpick: the link you wrote for the bookmarklet is broken, and it should be
http: //posterous.com/help/bookmarklet

Petra Weiss said...

This sounds nearly too good to be true! I think I have just discovered a gem with this site... I will definitely check out what is possible. Thanks!

Jun 23, 2009

Jazzper Isaksson said...

Wow, my wettest dream just came true!

Stefan said...

@Jesper: If that was your wettest dream, well ... I don't know what to say ;)

Pedro Thomaz said...

Not working (at least for me)

It's still hotlinking images :(

Can I ask something?
How can I set my blog to use my timezone (GMT+0)? If I post via web it removes 8 hours from the actual time, but if I post via email, it posts with GMT time it's weird :(

Pedro -- please email us at help@posterous.com and we'll figure out why its not working. Timezone controls coming.

Jun 26, 2009

ipuneet said...

Garry this is Pretty Cool thanks, just wondering if its possible to diplay inline gallyer incase if you add more then one image link ? ref to http://post.ly/yem it display them as single images rather then inline gallery

Jun 28, 2009

Korinthos Kackis said...

This image-hosting function doesn´t function for me either. It´s still hotlinking.

Jul 06, 2009

Stuart Moore said...

just wondering how you over-ride the default behaviour (say where the copyright does not permit you to host it or it is not desirable to arrange matters in this way)?

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