How to Prevent Your Digital Photos from Being Stolen on the Internet

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By mosscampion
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Protect your images online

Professional and amateur photographers alike struggle with posting their photos on the Internet due to the extremely delicate balance that exists between trying to sell or share photos online while also trying to protect them from being stolen. A digital photo you've taken with your digital camera is your own property, so when someone tries to download it, copy it, or call it their own, they are stealing it. Fortunately there are methods you can use to deter such behavior and protect your digital images online.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Step 1

The best way to prevent your digital photos from begin stolen on the Internet is to never upload them to the Internet in the first place. Unfortunately there is a widely held attitude by Internet users that everything is free on the web, but for the most part that is untrue. In order to fully protect your digital images from every being stolen, you have to keep them to yourself.
Step 2

Small sized image

Step 1 is not too practical if you are a professional photographer looking to sell photos or if you are just a hobbyist photographer who wants to share images with a photography community. So what else can you do to protect the photos you upload? One thing should do is never upload the full size high resolution version of your image. Resize or reduce the resolution of your image so that it is still visible and easy to see, but if someone were to download it, they could not in turn sell it or print it due to its small size.
Step 3

Another measure you can take to prevent your images from being stolen on the Internet is to embed your copyright information into the EXIF data. In your photo editing program, find where you can edit your image's exif data and enter your copyright information, like your personal name, your company name, or any other unique identifier.
Step 4

Watermark

In addition to embedding copyright into the image information itself, you can apply a unique watermark to your image. There are many different ways to create and apply a watermark. Consider finding a balance between an overly large watermark that detracts from your photo and a good sized watermark that clearly states you are the owner of the photograph. Keep in mind that it is easy to remove watermarks in photo editing programs, so try to place the watermark in a location on the image where it would be more difficult to remove.
Step 5

Photo sharing site

When posting your images online on your website or on a photo sharing site, check to see if there is an option to disable the 'right click save as' function. For example, on the popular photo sharing site, Flickr, you can choose a setting that makes it impossible for a person to right click on your image and save it to their hard drive. Even though there are still other things they can do to try to steal your photo, at least you will have a good first line of defense in place.
Step 6

The last measure you can take to protect your digital photos online is to apply for official copyright from the U.S. Government. This involves sending copies of all your images to copyright officials, but you will have much better resources to tap into if you ever decide to take legal action against someone who has stolen your photos.

Comments

ali-c said

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on 8/24/2009 Thanks for the tips. A good idea is to register your copyright online for extra peace of mind! Try http://www.digiprove.com/

seagems said

on 2/20/2009 Great Article !!!!

filipkrolupper said

on 2/4/2009 I prefer invisible watermark better. It does not damage the photo impression, thiefs cannot crop the watermark that easily and signed photo can be found on internet automatically. Have a look to DigiMarc or much easier SignMyImage. F>