Ahhh, I see what you mean now. This is exactly our point too so once you have the link you can display it anywhere, be it a blog, comment section, git repo, etc.

Here’s an example link: https://u.stg.macula.link/LHIIkEFeTTOaRo1N8Pol4A-0

It looks a bit different and doesn’t have file extension but the point is the same.

If I do ![](url) it will work just like any regular image link.

https://u.stg.macula.link/LHIIkEFeTTOaRo1N8Pol4A-0

By direct linking you mean accessing the image by its CID via any public gateway?

Good point, I’m with you on this one. The goal of the sharing mechanics is to be like a layer over IPFS that gives you additional features like adding on-the-fly image transformations (meaning you set ?width=100px in the URL and the server processes the image before showing it to whoever requested it) and analytics (which gives you the ability to see from which sources your photos are being accessed. This can also be a huge help in fighting unauthorized use – if you see views coming from some shady site, you can immediately check it and file the copyright claim). And in addition to all this you also preserve full metadata, which (1) is useful to prove your ownership and (2) will help in further licensing since we also add metadata for getting a “licenseable” mark in Google Images.

Here’s an example with one of my photos: https://jimpl.com/results/JLqNAwmLkEt4FayuZphK9Sq3?target=exif

Some of the fields are dummy data for now since we’re still in private beta stage but you can already see where this is going.

Hope this was useful, let me know if I answered your question or if you have anything else!