Illustration: Andy Wolber/TechRepublic

People identify all sorts of images in email signatures. In organizations, the inserted prototype is typically a logo, an advertizing or a promotional image. Sometimes it's a photo or stylized prototype of the sender. Images in personal electronic mail signatures often signal something about the person or the person'southward interests.

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If you utilize Gmail, you may upload an epitome or insert an image from the spider web or Google Bulldoze into your signature. And if you utilise Gmail as part of Google Workspace, an administrator tin configure a signature—including an paradigm—that appends to all approachable electronic mail, too. Simply any prototype an administrator includes must be bachelor at a public spider web link, so the steps below describe how to get your paradigm onto a Google Site in order to obtain a public link.

But before you add any image into your signature, let me add a annotation of caution. In general, I recommend people keep email signatures text-merely. Text is much more than accessible to people with low or no vision than an paradigm in a signature. Also, text uses far less bandwidth than an paradigm. (Brand sure to resize and/or compress your image to appropriate dimensions and quality.) That said, at that place are many times when an prototype in a Gmail signature may be merited.

How to add together an image in a personal Gmail account signature

To add, edit or manage signatures in a personal Gmail account:

  1. Go to Gmail in a desktop-class web browser.
  2. If needed, sign in to your Gmail account.
  3. In the upper correct area, select the Sprocket (settings) | See All Settings | General (from the menu options listed across the top).
  4. Scroll down to the Signature section.
  5. Either choose the "+ Create New" button or select an existing signature.
  6. In the signature expanse to the right, enter and format any text or links you lot want in your signature.
  7. Select the Insert epitome option (Figure A), then navigate to the epitome yous want.
  8. When finished, scroll to the bottom of the page and select the Relieve Changes push button.

Figure A

In Gmail Settings, select the image icon, and so upload or insert an epitome from the spider web or Google Drive.

Google Workspace admins: How to add an image in an appended Gmail footer

A Google Workspace administrator may manage email footers that append to every outbound email for an organization. In the Admin console, the important settings are at App | Google Workspace | Gmail | Compliance, select an organization (or organizational unit of measurement) from the left (if needed), then scroll to Suspend Footer and choose Configure (Figure B). To acquire how outbound footers work in Google Workspace, read my article, How to set a Gmail signature for your organization.

Figure B

A Google Workspace ambassador may choose to append a footer to outbound email for an organization. Any paradigm inserted into this appended footer must exist available on the web with a public link. However, images stored on Google Drive, even if publicly shared, will not work.

Only if you endeavour to insert an image stored on Google Drive into an outbound footer, it won't work. You may only add together an image with a public link into admin-managed appended footers (Figure B). A publicly shared image stored on Google Drive won't work.

I advise you create and maintain a Google Site where you add images, since any prototype stored on a Google Site page may be used in outbound footers—equally long as the Site is published and public. Those last ii criteria are important: The image insertion into the footer won't piece of work on sites that aren't public or aren't published nevertheless.

To create a new Google Site dedicated to your outbound images, you lot might:

  1. Type site.new in a desktop-class browser.
  2. Edit the title for your site (e.g., Promotional Footer Images).
  3. Then select Insert | Images to either Upload or Select images to your site (Figure C). Alternatively, you might select Insert | Drive and so choose images stored on Google Bulldoze to add to your Site.

    4. Figure C

    As you edit a Google Site, with the Insert tab active, select Images. You may then cull either to Upload or Select an image.
  4. Select Publish, then edit the web address for your site (e.g., Footers).
  5. Under Who Can View My Site, select Manage. And then, under Links, select Change.
  6. Next to the Published site option, select the driblet-downwards and cull Public (Effigy D), and then select Done.

    7. Effigy D

    Change your Site settings to brand your published site Public.
  7. Select Washed again. The box should at present brandish Anyone under Who Tin can View My Site. Select Publish.
  8. Side by side, select the drop-downwardly to the right of Publish, and so choose View Published Site (Effigy Due east). This should open the site in a new browser tab. Switch to that tab.

    9. Figure E

    In one case public and published, select the drop-downwardly options side by side to the Publish card and choose View published site.
  9. On your site, right-click on the paradigm you want to insert into your outbound footer, then select Copy Image Address (Figure F).

Effigy F

While viewing the published site, right-click (or Ctrl-click) on an image, then select Re-create Epitome Address from the displayed card.

Yous now accept the public link you need to paste into the prompt later on you select the image icon in the Append Footer section of the Admin panel. Equally an editor of the site, you lot tin e'er return to the site and copy the link to the published page. Share the link with others, and they'll exist able to admission the page.

Optionally, yous can take steps to make the footer page a bit less like shooting fish in a barrel to find. To do this, make sure you have at least two pages on your Google Site, and that your images are not on the Dwelling page of the site. And then, while editing your Site, select Pages, and then click on the three vertical dots to the right of your Footer page proper noun. Choose Hide from navigation (Figure G), which will remove the page from Google Site navigation menus. Since the page is omitted from the menu construction, information technology won't be available for a casual site company to access.

Figure Thousand

You lot might brand your footer paradigm page more difficult to observe with the Hide From Navigation option.

How do yous use images in Gmail signatures?

Do you include standard data, such as contact or company data, in your signatures? Or do yous personalize your signature with favorite images, phrases or quotes? Or do you lot "go minimalist" and omit the use of signatures entirely? Let me know how y'all use—or don't employ—images in Gmail signatures, either with a comment below or on Twitter (@awolber).