Do you sign your uploaded photos??

[poker]

Some PR posters put a signature or copyright wording on the photo they upload.

Is there a concern that I should be aware of?

Will some stock photography person save my picture and sell it?

Will my photos end up on the latest bundle of windows wall paper??

At first my uploads were pretty small so somebody would have to do some serious interpolation to get a print out of it. Not that my photos are good enough for stealing. But lately, I've been posting larger images because I wast people to get a good look. Higher resolutions helps in reproduction.

For example, the photo of the week at the gallery is HUGE!!!!

http://gallery.photographyreview.com...hp?photo=31726

With that online file you can make a 35 x 26 poster and sell it at the local classic car show.

Also, simple signatures can be cloned out but if we use elaborate watermarks then we ruin the picture we are sharing.

I don't put signatures partly because I don't think anyone actually steals photos but what do I know?

[mjs1973]

I have started putting a copy write on the photos that I post here. I'm not sure why I do it tho. I use a script that puts a frame around my image, and adds the copy write in the matte. If anyone wants to steal my images. all they have to do is crop the frame out to get rid of the copy write. Then again, I don't upload big files, so I dought anyone is going to get a good print out of one of my 500 pixel image.

[Ronnoco]

No, but I have only uploaded a few so far, not my best work, and with noticeable faults.

Ronnoco

[ken1953]

I have begun signing everything I put on the net. Although the odds are not great that any of my stuff will be stolen, I know that it has happened and will continue to happen. I use a framing script like Michael and it just adds it automatically.
Also, on the site for the online course I'm taking, there is a lesson on using roll over buttons/layers to add in your "Copyrighted WorK" or "Do Not Copy" buttons. Also, how to add the scripting to prevent the popups that come up when you move your mouse over a picture. These are just a few of the tricks people are using to cut down on illegal copying.
If you think about it, and it's been said on here many times, for every picture that is copied illegally, that's money out of all of our pockets, because it makes our product less marketable. And yes, our photography is a marketable commodity that needs to be protected by all of us. So, sign it, us rollovers, watermarks, whatever it takes to prevent theft.
Ken

[Asylum Steve]

Image theft aside, there are still reasons you want to put your name on a posted pic, and website, too (if you have one).

The most obvious being that posting here is the equivilent of electronic publishing, and unless you really dislike or are embarassed by your work, I'd think you'd want a by line every bit as much as if you were being published in a hard copy media such as a newspaper or magazine.

It's simply a way of lettting the thousands of potential viewers quickly know that you created the photo. And adding a website URL is an easy and free way of promoting your photography while staying within the spam guidelines of this site.

As for folks downloading pics, you'd be naive to think it doesn't happen, and doesn't happen a lot. There is almost no way to prevent it, and if the thought of that bothers you, you'd probably be better off not posting images on the web. Period.

OTOH, some members here (most notably Photo John and myself) don't see that as neccessarily a bad thing. If someone "steals" and uses (non-commercially, of course) one of our pics with our name and website plainly visable, we consider it free advertising. It's also a tremendous compliment that they liked the work so much they want to have a copy of it...

Should they go to the trouble of cropping out that info, well that's life and IMO not worth getting in a froth over. Or, if I feel it's abuse or misuse, I can contact them and start the process to have them remove the image or replace the missing credit information.

[drg]

I mark everything I post, whether it is visible or not. Some images I've posted various places have some commercial value, some don't but one legally has to be in the position to defend the copyright.

Most of the theft is occurring in other parts of the world for publication and stock. China and the Middle East are a problem. The Balkan areas as well have had many occurrences of rogue stock operators for several years. You'd never collect from them, but if they sold an image to anyone reputable, you could easily collect from the end user if you can prove it was yours originally.

In addition to the aforementioned advertising value, a visible watermark/signature can discriminate between different types of work. I regularly use three types and locations for different categories of work.

One way with web images to be able to prove ownership is by using a calculated crop. By removing a unique edge portion of the image, the original non-published edge that fits uniquely to the photo quickly can solve the question of ownership. The edge must contain sufficient detail to prevent it being vague or indeterminate. A stock/business card can be included alongside the calibration/gray/white reference in an image and cropped from the final.

I also have started including IPTC information in most of my images.

[Asylum Steve]

One way with web images to be able to prove ownership is by using a calculated crop. By removing a unique edge portion of the image, the original non-published edge that fits uniquely to the photo quickly can solve the question of ownership...

Pretty good idea. Another trick I've mentioned before when putting photos on one's website is to use a table, make the image itself the background of the table cell, and insert a blank gif (the same dimensions as the pic) as a place holder in the cell.

When a viewer right clicks on the image and uses the save as feature, what they save to their HD is actually the gif file. Useless...

Of course, this does not PREVENT image theft, but it does put up a roadblock to the casual "thief" and makes it tougher.

[another view]

Even though I rarely getting around to signing my uploaded images, I agree with what Steve says. There are so many ways that people who want to steal them can do it, and one has even been shown in this thread if you think about it...

Posting anything on the internet has risks. I don't tend to worry too much about it and like Steve says it may even get your name out there a little more.

[Glycerin19]

I'm new to this board but I've been browsing the threads and wanted to mention that several pictures have been stolen from my personal webpage. Since I've changed to digital I've been putting a watermark on them but prior to that there was nothing and those are usually the ones that I find out there. For example there is an NHL hockey player that has several of my photographs on his official website that he never asked permission to use. I don't even think they are of great quality but nevertheless. I also find that kids hotlink my photos all the time in their myspace pages. The digital ones of course have my name on them but I still break the links for anyone who doesn't ask first. I've gotten a few requests to get a clean copy of a picture and I usually agree. I just want to be asked first.

[poker]

Hi Glycerin19. Wow, there is mention of digital photo post turning in to stock photography out there but your example is probably 10x more common than that. It must be quite annoying to have to change files names just to break URL links. Very interesting.

For example there is an NHL hockey player that has several of my photographs on his official website that he never asked permission to use.

I think this statement alone can start a thread under "Photo Business and Law "

[boomtap]

What about using a flash site. It isn't possible to steal them other than a screen shot right?

[LeeIs]

As far as adding a signature, I do sometimes though very rarely. I never post big enough images to get any print out of them though. 600x400 px image at 72 dpi isn't gonna get anyone any kind of print.

Also, there's something that I wanted to post for the last couple of days but didn't know where to post it. so I'll post it here since it has to do with this topic.

I was looking around the web for a template to use to build my site. As I was browsing through some photography template a shot I saw really caught my attention. It was exactly the same as another I saw posted here. I know the shot because I really liked it when I saw it here.

I really wanted to contact the uploader and let him know that his shot made it into one of those templates but I totally forgot who posted here. Anyways, it was a shot of Ireland or Scotland I belive. 3 cabins that looked like the front end of boats that have been chopped off and placed upside down as a shelter.

You guys remember that shot right?

Anyways, there was so many templates that I looked at that I don't even remember which one I saw it in, but rest assured that I saw the exact one. The Original posted here might have been in B&W, and the one I saw was in colour. That kind of threw me off, but it was identical.

If you're the original poster of that shot and you really wanna see if it's yours, let me know and I'll go back to the site and look through the templates.

[another view]

What about using a flash site. It isn't possible to steal them other than a screen shot right?

I don't know how else to steal an image off a flash site other than a screen shot - that's what I was getting at in my post above. Do a screen shot, bring it into Photoshop and chop off everything around the image. It's not going to make any kind of a print but may suit the thief just fine for web use.

[boomtap]

Thats why I think I am probably going to start a flash site for my stuff. I figure if somebody wants the photo so bad as to take a screen shot of a 480 image and do all that work, (when they could just e-mail me and I would probably give them the whole picture) then they probably really need it. I prefer the ease of use of a php or html site, but I will probably just have to spend some hours getting a decent flash site up. I have been posting to a blog, but nobody really can find it in a sea of blogs. Sites with a URL are much better I think for drawing traffic.