Do you put copyright on your pictures?

[mettur]

I am trying to take an informal poll on what people do with pictures when they post them on their own website.

I have seen some sites where people have clearly put their name in big letters either at the bottom or some rare occasions right in the center of the photos. - Not sure I would like this, since it could obstruct the picture.

In other cases, I have seen many sites, where they put the name in small letters very close to border in a subtle way, you can clearly see the name, but its subtle. - May be OK, since the name is there. But others could still take it and crop the name out.

Then there are many sites with no names or copyright marks on the pictures. - Not sure I like this, my work being taken by others. - but makes it easy for others to see the pictures.

I would go with second, but not sure its enough protection. I hate to go with first option, and change the picture itself.

I wonder what you all do.

[Daniel Bates]

I haven't yet. I'm going to start doing that very very soon, though... my work is finding its way onto desktops and screen savers and profile pictures. Uncredited, to boot.

[Hogleg 44]

I print a logo copyright on the bottom corner of my online photos, and also put it in the IPTC data embedded in the photo...but that can be stripped away too...!

[HotHolly]

We had used Swish on our site and did NOT mark our copyright on our images since you can't swipe flash. (Our main image Gallery is still Swish)

Since then, I have changed the main images to static. They currently have nothing on them.

You can disable rt. click and that puts off over 50% of photo thieves and lazy people! But Mozilla users will get kind of erked with that.

The best way to keep people from stealing your images is flash/ swish (in my opinion). You dont have to put anything on them and no one can take them...but they can see them. This only does NOT work if you have lots of people visiting your site that have dial-up. Which we jsut realized we have. Ugh. I hate dial up. But the rural towns around here are looking here and they dont have anything, but dial-up.

So, that probably didnt help much...

[KeithAlanK]

Copyright directly on a photo won't stop anyone from stealing and it's unsightly, so I don't bother.
What I do is put a notice in plain language at the top of each page of my site.

If you plan on putting it on each photo, just a reminder that alt 0169 (use the number pad) gives you ©.

[mdurisseau]

It goes on everything I sell, for certain...I try to use a pretty close to inivisible mark in the lower right corner...I also put a sticker on the back with contact info, and a rights statement...

[huxley]

i put a small watermark signature on my photos. its the best compromise i could come up with. slightly translucent but still visible. if a thief wants something bad enough they will get it.

[david seale]

no, nor do i think i ever plan on it. but then i think, what if i take a really good picture that somoene steals and makes money off of it.

[p27rpy]

i put a semi-translucent watermark on my pictures, just so that if they are ever reposted, ill be able to tell quickly (and so will people that know me). i try not to make them very noticeable, but with everyone downloadin pictures these days, i just want some credit for whats mine, you know?
heres my example:

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

This has been discussed several times before here. What most people have done is to post very small files on the net so that if someone tries to make a print then it isn't very good at any size larger than wallet size. Now it doesn't stop people from posting your pic on their website and most times when people post pics and watermark them they place the watermark/copyright info on an edge which can easily be cropped off in most cases or cloned out using PS so you find some placing their information across the middle of the photo which in many cases makes it poor to look at.

One person mentions using flash but it was brought up in earlier discussions that even those shots can be grabbed by persons with the right technical knowledge.

I would say unless it is a very important shot, such as an acident as it is happening or some other such action, then not to worry too much about it and just to put a semitransparent copyright statement across the frame and to post only a low res small pic on the web. If it is an important shot sell it first to whatever market will buy it before posting a copy on the web.

[Clayton Wallace]

Lots of discussion on this topic in other threads...

[jeffkohn]

The only things you can do to completely prevent theft is keep your images off the web or use such a big, ugly watermark that the image is worthless anyway. Neither option is terribly useful to most of us. Even using Flash or disabling right-click is useless against anyone who knows how to press the "Print-Screen" button.

I think keeping the images too small for print, putting your copyright notice in the metadata and including an unobtrusive signature/logo is a reasonable amount of protection. In the case of casual copying by someone too stupid or lazy to remove your sig/copyright it will be obvious where the image came from. And in the case of someone who crops/removes the copyright or metadata it will be pretty easy to prove that they knowingly violated your copyright.

I don't worry about it too much because realistically the chances of somebody getting rich off an 800*600 JPEG of an image I took are nil. If the idea of anybody copying your image for any reason at all really bothers you so much, then just don't post your images on the net.

[Seymore]

Yes... I put a copyright on the bottom of almost all my PICs. If you think it's unsightly... good. It's meant to discourage and educate. My only other thought is if you don't want your images pilfered from the WEB, don't put them out there.

OH... and I do limit my images to 800x600, as a general rule. Try printing one this size some time. Even a 4x6 looks crappy, IMPO.

Sorry... I know this is quite blunt. But, I guess that's why the DW married me. (o:

[TJPhotoGuy]

Yes I do - but it doesn't do any good, someone still removed it. Not much you can do but sue - if you have thousands of dollars to waste on suing someone poor.

[tragic hero]

Originally Posted by HotHolly

You can disable rt. click and that puts off over 50% of photo thieves and lazy people! But Mozilla users will get kind of erked with that.

shift print screen will take them, only way around that is to have the image do like windows media player and have a black image on the screen that wmp projects onto so if you shift print screen you only get a black box.