Analogy: Andy Wolber/TechRepublic

People place all sorts of images in email signatures. In organizations, the inserted image is typically a logo, an advertizing or a promotional image. Sometimes it's a photograph or stylized image of the sender. Images in personal email signatures oftentimes indicate something about the person or the person'southward interests.

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If you use Gmail, yous may upload an epitome or insert an image from the web or Google Drive into your signature. And if y'all utilise Gmail equally part of Google Workspace, an administrator can configure a signature—including an image—that appends to all outgoing email, as well. But whatever image an administrator includes must be available at a public web link, so the steps beneath describe how to become your prototype onto a Google Site in guild to obtain a public link.

But before you add together any epitome into your signature, let me add a annotation of caution. In general, I recommend people go on email signatures text-simply. Text is much more accessible to people with low or no vision than an image in a signature. Too, text uses far less bandwidth than an paradigm. (Brand certain to resize and/or shrink your image to appropriate dimensions and quality.) That said, at that place are many times when an epitome 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-form web browser.
  2. If needed, sign in to your Gmail account.
  3. In the upper correct area, select the Sprocket (settings) | Run into All Settings | Full general (from the menu options listed across the pinnacle).
  4. Scroll down 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 yous want in your signature.
  7. Select the Insert image option (Figure A), then navigate to the prototype y'all want.
  8. When finished, curl to the bottom of the page and select the Save Changes button.

Figure A

In Gmail Settings, select the image icon, and so 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 electronic mail for an system. In the Admin panel, 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 Append 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 organisation.

Figure B

A Google Workspace ambassador may choose to suspend a footer to outbound electronic mail for an organization. Any image inserted into this appended footer must be available on the web with a public link. Even so, images stored on Google Drive, even if publicly shared, will not piece of work.

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

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

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

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

    4. Effigy 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, so edit the web address for your site (e.g., Footers).
  5. Under Who Can View My Site, select Manage. And so, under Links, select Change.
  6. Next to the Published site option, select the drop-downwards and choose Public (Figure D), then select Done.

    7. Figure D

    Modify your Site settings to make your published site Public.
  7. Select Done again. The box should at present brandish Anyone under Who Can View My Site. Select Publish.
  8. Next, select the drop-down to the right of Publish, then choose View Published Site (Effigy E). This should open the site in a new browser tab. Switch to that tab.

    9. Effigy E

    In one case public and published, select the driblet-downward options next to the Publish card and cull View published site.
  9. On your site, right-click on the paradigm you want to insert into your outbound footer, and so select Copy Epitome Address (Figure F).

Effigy F

While viewing the published site, correct-click (or Ctrl-click) on an image, then select Copy Image Address from the displayed bill of fare.

You now have the public link you need to paste into the prompt after you select the image icon in the Append Footer section of the Admin console. As an editor of the site, you can always return 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, you can take steps to make the footer page a bit less easy to notice. To do this, brand certain you accept at least two pages on your Google Site, and that your images are non on the Domicile page of the site. Then, while editing your Site, select Pages, and then click on the three vertical dots to the correct of your Footer folio name. Cull Hide from navigation (Effigy One thousand), which will remove the page from Google Site navigation menus. Since the page is omitted from the menu construction, it won't exist available for a casual site visitor to access.

Figure G

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

How do yous use images in Gmail signatures?

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