How to Post a Picture on Reddit

So you want to post a picture on Reddit, upload it into your text link or add it to your comment, but you don’t know how ? Keep reading.

Can I upload a picture on Reddit ?

Not really, Reddit is not an image hosting service, which means you can’t just upload a photo from your computer. You have to first upload it somewhere and then link to it from Reddit.

Ok, so how do I post an image on Reddit ?

You’ve got three options.

Option 1: Submit it as a direct link

This is the most straightforward way. Go to a subreddit that supports post thumbnails like /r/images or/r/getmotivated – this simply means you’ll find the actual image next to the post title. For example:

The image above shows a thumbnail with a link pointing to https://imgur.com/a/jElce, which is nothing more than a banal (but effective) marketing attempt from Absolut Vodka’s marketing department.

Then simply submit it as a normal post, but use the image url.

Also note that not all sub-reddits support thumbnails.

Option 2: Insert it into a text post

It would be cool to insert an image into your text post, right ? Well, forget it, you can’t.But at least you can put a link to your image in your text post. You’ll need to use the anchor formatting tag to do that. For example:

[Link To Some Image](https://imgur.com/gallery/z5gYn4U)

becomes

Link To Some Image

Just insert this into your post. For more information check my Reddit Formatting Guide.

Option 3: Insert an image into your comment

Just like with the text post, you can’t add an actual image there. Use a link instead with the formatting tag from the previous example.

Where to upload my image ?

All right, so now you know you can’t upload an image from your machine and you can’t directly embed it. But where can you easily upload your image ?

If you ask Reddit, they’ll answer you “use Imgur”. It’s written everywhere on their site including the FAQ section. It feels almost like that’s the only option to use with Reddit, when in fact it’s just very popular. But why is it so popular anyway ?

Why does Reddit recommend Imgur ?

Because it was created by a Redditor especially for Reddit. And because they share profits and ad traffic. Reddit is already super popular, so why not just create a complementary service and promote it through Reddit ?

But of course you can use any other like

Flickr
Photobucket
Imageshack.us
Freeimagehosting.net
Postimage.org

to name a few.

More info: How to upload an image on imgur