How do you protect your photos when you put them online?

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Rob Sylvan

Rob Sylvan

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I'm doing some research for an article I'm writing and I'm curious to hear your thoughts about what measures you take to protect the photos you put online. Is it even an issue you worry about? Do you use sites like Flickr, Vox, Facebook and Photobucket to share photos? Do you have your own website? If you have a website, do you use any fancy technology designed to protect from theft? I'm certainly curious about anything that ties in with Lightroom, but it is not required.

Any and all thoughts and opinions welcome, and thanks in advance.
 
Rob, on my own website I have used DIGIMARC. Not at all sure how efective it is. Applied with a Photoshop Plugin. A yearly fee is paid for it's use.

At SmugMug I use a watermark or two I created and SM applies to all my images as a server action. This allows SM to remove the watermark for requested/paid printing/copying services.

I also use a JavaScript against Control/Right clip copying, but screenshots will get by that, even for Flash image galleries.

Another way is never post hi rez (only 72ppi) no larger than 8'' pixel a side images. Makes them pretty useless for any real enlargement work.

Don
 
I just post smallish images (96'x64' at the biggest), with a small but noticable watermark in the corner (at these dimensions, Lightroom's watermarks are appropriately sized). I use both my own site and Flickr.

There is no "fancy technology" which can prevent theft. If the data is sent to a computer for display, it can be captured.

While my watermarks can be edited or cropped out, they are noticeable enough to remind people that the work is subject to copyright, which will be enough to deter casual theft (which is usually done out of ignorance rather than malice).

(As an aside, Don mentioned 72 ppi. I know Don knows better -- PPI is irrelevant here. It's only the pixel dimensions that matter.)
 
Mark Sirota said:
(As an aside, Don mentioned 72 ppi. I know Don knows better -- PPI is irrelevant here. It's only the pixel dimensions that matter.)
Click to expand...
Thanks for the 'reminder' Mark.

Don
 
I set my Flickr account so that only my friends and family can print or download photos(or even see most of them) and set the CC license to all rights reserved. I think that watermarks ruin the integrity of the image, and I'm pretty sure that the people that I posted the photos for don't want to see watermarks on them. I would never put visible watermarks on the images on my website.
 
Depends on where they're going. If you put it online, there's not a whole heap you can do.

Customer's pictures for online ordering have a recurring watermark all over them, and are set as a background image, overlaid with a transparent gif to prevent right click saves even if they've got javascript turned off. It won't stop people who are really determined, but it's at least a little less obvious.

Pictures for display are tucked into flash galleries, but again, there's not a whole heap that you can do. Just keep them small.

If I don't want it copied, I don't put it out there.
 
Mark Sirota said:
There is no "fancy technology" which can prevent theft. If the data is sent to a computer for display, it can be captured.
Click to expand...

Agreed, which is why I couched it by saying "designed" to prevent theft, but perhaps "touted" would have been a better choice?
 
Along these lines, I think it's important to make sure your iptc metadata includes the copyright notice. It might be helpful in a dispute over ownership of a particular image file.
 
Flickr: No protection, that's what I use it for, open sharing of personal/family/friend stuff. Help yourself. Fairly lo-rez u/l's tho'.

My event photo web service: Simple-minded(lo-rez sample, right click disable, and water-marking, etc.). Most of my potential clients here are teens/young adults, lots (enough, anyway) of it ends up 'pirated' on MySpace, etc. with the watermarks intact; I choose to call that word of mouth advertising.

My website, no protection whatsoever.

I don't earn my living with photography, in most cases I'm happy to make a few bucks to buy gear with. I know this is a potentially serious problem for many pros, and I support their intellectual property rights, and their efforts to preserve them. It's just not a huge problem for someone at my level.
 
It poses the biggest paradox for aspiring pro's though...

To gain exposure for your work, you want people to see your best work. Yet, you risk losing your images, with no acknowlegement for your work artistically while receiving little income for it.

It is the perplexing process i currently brood over as i create website.
 
Rob,

I have read everyone’s post, and agree with most that there is little to do to protect our images (for those of us who making a living at it) I have tried many different ways to protect an image including using DIGIMARC what Don Ricklin mentioned. I have my own website and I manage other sites for a few photographers

The way DIGIMARC works, is by imbedding meta data into the image that cannot be manipulated, and thus tracking the image where ever it goes. Who has the time for this? Not me. So I have my own way to try to protect my images as much as I can.


I know the argument regarding the 72ppi or dpi for putting images online. But here is where I have been able to do some experimenting.

1) Using Photoshop to reduce the image size in both pixels and dpi
2) Using Fireworks to optimize the image in 1'% increments to get to the point of where you just start seeing the pixilation online

These were old methods and once set, I saved them as batch process so it was not too time consuming, now comes LR 1.' and current for me LR2. And now I realize that the last post in here was in 2''7 so I’m wondering if I should even continue on this matter.
 
Not bad!!! I just realized I was looking at the wrong dates.
 
With LR2 you can do the simple, imbed watermark on image and walk away making it big enough to notice, but small so it does not take away from the image. I agree with Brad Snyder “I choose to call that word of mouth advertising” so long as the watermark is still there, that’s great.
Now comes the fun stuff with Lightroom, I have noticed a few adjustment that I could make importing the images into Lightroom.
1) In Photoshop I took the original image 4288x2848x24b 3.9mb file. Using my action already created for this I end up with a 9'3x6''x24b 63.9kb file oh and these are jpegs.
2) I import them into LR (got to tell you much faster importing 6'kb files rather than 4mb or even 8mb files) and then I go to my Web Module.
3) They way I have the export set-up in LR makes another difference, that I end up with a file size average of 39kb.
So with both types of shopping carts FLASH, and HTML that LR can produce it’s a wash, if you are one of the savvy ones and knows how to capture a screen shot of a Flash site then so be it, because I tried and all I got was a little square, so I know there is a way to screen capture Flash images. And this goes the same for HTML pages that have images, again here we hope that the watermark stays. Also I have tried the js script what point does that help if I can screen capture it. Here are a few of my projects. Websites [COLOR=#8'''8']www.holm4sale.com[/COLOR] , [COLOR=#''''ff]www.unruephoto.com/online/curry[/COLOR] and [COLOR=#''''ff]www.unruephoto.com/online/2''8/brown[/COLOR] all of these were created using LR 1.4.1 and LR2 you will notice that imagery is everything I’m working on a stock website and will see how that comes out. For now that’s all I have to offer…Hope I could help if anyone has questions regarding workflow please feel free to contact me…
 
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