User:Proteins/Uploading images tutorial

In an earlier tutorial, we showed how to find images at the Wikimedia Commons to illustrate your article. In this tutorial, we show you how to upload your own images to the Commons, enriching the world!

The crucial question to ask before you upload an image to the Commons is whether anyone besides you has the copyright to it. Briefly, all is well if you own the copyright, or if the image's copyright has expired, or if it's in the public domain. If none of those pertain, please think twice about uploading that image; maybe there's a better substitute? You can learn more about these issues by reading this page. For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll assume that you own the copyright to the image you'd like to upload.

First steps: Log onto the Wikimedia Commons and click on "Upload file"

This image shows the first step in uploading an image to the Commons: logging in and clicking on the "Upload file" link.

Specify copyright status

This image shows the second step of uploading an image: describing where it came from. This helps to establish its copyright status.

Fill in the upload form

Overview of the Commons upload form.

See also

• Wikipedia:Preparing_images_for_upload
• The Commons upload form
• Choosing a license