Insert image into bytea question

Greetings, all.

This might be a stupid question, but I have not found one good post or
article on the syntax for inserting an image into a PostgreSQL table
bytea field on the Internet.

I am currently learning version 9.1, which I had read should work pretty
well for inserting and retrieving images in the bytea format, but i
don't know how. I have seen examples of the bytea_import command (which
I couldn't get to work), and other posts that state that the image must
be encoded using a "SELECT encode(XXXX)" statement in the query. I had
originally intended to store the location of the image into a field in
the database and just pull that reference from the table, and was
hopeful when I saw that PostgreSQL can handle storing images directly,
and that it may be even be the preferred method in some cases.

I have been looking online for a couple of hours and have left the Net
about as confused as when I started! I think that some of the reason is
that this appears to be a newer method of doing things, and I have been
reading older information.

Any guidance that anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.
George R.