Copyright/Watermark

[Valentine]

Hi everyone.. As a newbie here.. I want to say HI>. and THANK You all for such wonderful information.. I have been reading and reading.. and absorbing.. enjoying all your magnificent photos.. and hoping that my skills will be there soon as well! :)

I do have a question that I have not seen an answer to.... How do you protect your images as yours when you post them on the internet. I have some pics that I just posted on Facebook.. and I dont mind if folks tag, or even print them out for their personal use.. but I saw some of my celebrity shots being reposted under other people's photo albums as if they were their own photo.... now THAT ticked me off.... and got me wondering how I can protect my photos.. so.. any advice????

Thank you :)

Kathy

[maddmike]

I use photoshop to put a copyright mark on my photos. I will never post a pic on the internet without a copyright.

[MarkBarbieri]

The simple truth is that there is no way to totally protect yourself. Watermarks can be painted over. Unless you obscure an important part of your picture with a watermark (which makes it pretty useless to post), someone can just clean up the watermark. Of course, with a moderate watermark, only a reasonably competent photo retoucher can remove the watermark, so it will cut down on the problem.

[Gdad]

I don't feel the need to watermark anything. I take pictures as a hobby and could care less if someone wants to use one. If I made a living from photography I'm sure I would have a different opinion.

[ssanders79]

The only way to truly copyright your photographs to collect damages is to register them with the US Copyright Office http://www.copyright.gov/ I think it cost about $45 which you can submit a disc with multiple files. You do not need to send the full resolution originals. So you can easily submit thousands of images at once for the same fee.

I have not personally done this, but there is a ton of information online on how to do it properly.

At one time I too put digital watermarks on my images, but those are easy to remove or crop out. If you want you can put an annoying Full image/low opacity watermark over the image if your intent is to sell the image or make it useless to others who would typically just copy the image.

I also imbed a copyright line in my EXIF data via my camera's comment setting and via Lightroom importing. Not everyone is aware this is an option so they might crop or clone out a watermark, but the exif might still be in tact.

Here is a very good interview from PhotoShopUserTV with Ed Greenberg regarding Copyrighting your photos (http://www.photoshopusertv.com/2009/02/bonus-interview-with-copyright-attorney-ed-greenberg/). It is about 30 minutes.