Analogy: Andy Wolber/TechRepublic

People place all sorts of images in email signatures. In organizations, the inserted paradigm is typically a logo, an advertising or a promotional image. Sometimes it's a photo or stylized image of the sender. Images in personal e-mail signatures oft indicate something nearly the person or the person's interests.

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If you lot use Gmail, you may upload an epitome or insert an image from the web or Google Bulldoze into your signature. And if you use Gmail as role of Google Workspace, an administrator can configure a signature—including an image—that appends to all outgoing electronic mail, every bit well. Just any image an ambassador includes must exist bachelor at a public web link, so the steps beneath draw how to get your image onto a Google Site in society to obtain a public link.

But before you add together any image into your signature, let me add a note of circumspection. In general, I recommend people keep email signatures text-only. Text is much more accessible to people with low or no vision than an image in a signature. Also, text uses far less bandwidth than an image. (Make certain to resize and/or compress your image to appropriate dimensions and quality.) That said, there are many times when an image in a Gmail signature may be merited.

How to add an image in a personal Gmail business relationship signature

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

  1. Become to Gmail in a desktop-grade web browser.
  2. If needed, sign in to your Gmail account.
  3. In the upper right area, select the Sprocket (settings) | See All Settings | General (from the bill of fare options listed beyond the top).
  4. Curlicue downward to the Signature section.
  5. Either choose the "+ Create New" button or select an existing signature.
  6. In the signature area to the right, enter and format any text or links you lot want in your signature.
  7. Select the Insert image selection (Effigy A), and then navigate to the image y'all want.
  8. When finished, scroll to the bottom of the folio and select the Save Changes button.

Effigy A

In Gmail Settings, select the image icon, then upload or insert an image from the 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 system (or organizational unit) from the left (if needed), so scroll to Append Footer and cull Configure (Figure B). To larn how outbound footers piece of work in Google Workspace, read my commodity, How to set a Gmail signature for your system.

Figure B

A Google Workspace administrator may choose to append a footer to outbound email for an arrangement. Whatever image inserted into this appended footer must be available on the web with a public link. However, images stored on Google Drive, even if publicly shared, will non piece of work.

Just if you endeavor to insert an paradigm stored on Google Drive into an outbound footer, it won't work. You may merely add an epitome with a public link into admin-managed appended footers (Figure B). A publicly shared paradigm stored on Google Bulldoze won't piece of work.

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

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

  1. Blazon site.new in a desktop-grade browser.
  2. Edit the title for your site (east.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 then cull images stored on Google Drive to add to your Site.

    4. Figure C

    Equally y'all edit a Google Site, with the Insert tab active, select Images. Yous may and then choose either to Upload or Select an image.
  4. Select Publish, and so edit the web address for your site (e.g., Footers).
  5. Nether Who Can View My Site, select Manage. And so, under Links, select Alter.
  6. Next to the Published site selection, select the drop-down and choose Public (Figure D), then select Done.

    7. Figure D

    Change your Site settings to brand your published site Public.
  7. Select Done again. The box should now display Anyone nether Who Can View My Site. Select Publish.
  8. Side by side, select the drop-down to the correct of Publish, so cull View Published Site (Effigy E). This should open the site in a new browser tab. Switch to that tab.

    9. Figure Due east

    Once public and published, select the drop-downwards options next to the Publish menu and cull View published site.
  9. On your site, right-click on the image you want to insert into your outbound footer, then select Copy Image Address (Figure F).

Figure F

While viewing the published site, right-click (or Ctrl-click) on an image, then select Copy Image Address from the displayed menu.

You now have the public link you need to paste into the prompt after y'all select the image icon in the Append Footer section of the Admin console. As an editor of the site, you can ever render to the site and copy the link to the published page. Share the link with others, and they'll be able to access the page.

Optionally, y'all can take steps to make the footer folio a bit less piece of cake to discover. To do this, make sure you take at least two pages on your Google Site, and that your images are not on the Dwelling page of the site. Then, while editing your Site, select Pages, then click on the three vertical dots to the right of your Footer page name. Choose Hide from navigation (Figure Thou), which will remove the page from Google Site navigation menus. Since the page is omitted from the bill of fare structure, information technology won't exist bachelor for a coincidental site company to admission.

Figure G

You might make your footer epitome page more difficult to find with the Hide From Navigation pick.

How do you use images in Gmail signatures?

Exercise you include standard information, such as contact or company information, in your signatures? Or practice you personalize your signature with favorite images, phrases or quotes? Or practise you "get minimalist" and omit the utilize of signatures entirely? Permit me know how y'all apply—or don't use—images in Gmail signatures, either with a comment below or on Twitter (@awolber).