Any Reviews on Photo Copyright Protection?

[JohnKoerner]

Not that I am "there" yet, to where my images need protection, but it occurs to me as I plan a trip to Peru this year, to take as many wonderful photos as I can (with the ultimate goal to put them up online), that some of those images might turn out to be quite good. And it occurs to me that anyone can steal them if they are posted online.

So my question to you professionals, as I am sure many of you have taken truly priceless images, what do you do to try to protect your work in some way? Do you encrypt your pages or your photographs?

I have a program called "WeblockPro" that prevents downloading either images or anything on a webpage (here is an example: http://tennesseebutterflies.angelfire.com/qmark.html), but I am wondering about encrypting the images themselves. Now the photos on the above site of mine were just taken with an old Powershot G6, but as I begin to buy some serious equipment, I would imagine that my images might take on some serious quality too, and I would like to know how you folks protect your images.

I have an older Adobe In-Design Collection software suite, complete with Photoshop 7.01, and PS has a product plug-in availability called "DigiMarc." I linked to the Digimarc website and I guess their $500+ software will place an un-editable watermark on your images, that is also traceable online.

Do any of you professionals protect your work with this product? If not, why not, or do you recommend some other (and better) product to protect your work? I can't imagine the frustration of being a professional, shelling out $7000 for a trip to some remote area, spending hours in insect-infested terrain, of finally getting the shots of a lifetime ... only to have some scumbag undermine all that effort with a "right-click" of his mouse, transferring your hard-earned work onto his hard drive. Then he too could go sell it, w/o a drop of sweat off his brow, and without a dime spent out of his wallet.

Surely you pros all must therefore use some form of software protection for your photos!

If so, which brands are generally considered top-notch? Have there been any reviews on this subject here? Thank you for any input.

Jack

[framah]

Are you saying that your butterfly images are protected now with Webblock pro? Cause, I just grabbed one of the images over to my desktop and I can then throw it into PS and get it big enough to print a nice copy for myself. I won't do that but I wanted to see how the web block pro works. I was expecting the image to scramble or something but it transferred quite nicely.

[JohnKoerner]

Are you saying that your butterfly images are protected now with Webblock pro? Cause, I just grabbed one of the images over to my desktop and I can then throw it into PS and get it big enough to print a nice copy for myself. I won't do that but I wanted to see how the web block pro works. I was expecting the image to scramble or something but it transferred quite nicely.

Really? What was the name of the file image?

I have them named a certain way, so if what you are saying is true, you should know the name of the image, and (if you do) I will proceed to flush this program down the toilet. LOL

[luong]

Only to have some scumbag undermine all that effort with a "right-click" of his mouse, transferring your hard-earned work onto his hard drive.

Surely you pros all must therefore use some form of software protection for your photos!

[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

From a business point of view, it is kind of useless to worry. The folks who are going to pay top $ for your images will not "steal" it, since they don't want to be fired if their company is sued for copyright infringement, and they have a budget to spend. The folks without a budget are not going to license from you anyways.

All the "scumbags" are going to get from me is a compressed 550 pixel file. My full resolution images range from 5000 pixels to 12500 pixels, so I wouldn't say they transfered my work into their drives.

Bottom line: I use absolutely no protection on my [a href=\"http://www.terragalleria.com]picture library website[/url].

[Brad Proctor]

Looks to me like the Weblockpro software scrambles the HTML and prevents the user from doing a right-click and save image.

However, you can still do a "alt-print screen" to capture the page and crop out the image.

[luong]

Forgot to reply to the question :-) so here it is: from a technological point of view, all anti-downloading protection schemes are worthless. If you want to do something, sign up with a company that uses visual (not watermark based) tracking and partners with attorneys. The pioneer is picscout.

[photopat]

none of your images are protected from being downloaded.
In Firefox you simply go to->tools->page info and click on the media tab .. then simply just chose what image  you want to save ( download)

You don't even have copyright notice in the the file itself when I check image info in photoshop.

[JohnKoerner]

Ah-ha, thanks for the insight.

Basically, the real work are the RAW files and .tiff files, which you would never make public, so worrying about little bitty .jpegs you do display is a waste of time.

Gotcha.

Thanks again.

[JohnKoerner]

none of your images are protected from being downloaded.
In Firefox you simply go to->tools->page info and click on the media tab .. then simply just chose what image  you want to save ( download)

You don't even have copyright notice in the the file itself when I check image info in photoshop.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=170692\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Interesting.

Well, I guess that lil' program will be spiraling down the tubes shortly, LOL

Do any of you bother to copyright your smaller .jpeg images? That is really why I posted this was because I figured there had to be a way around my little WeblockPro software, so I wanted to know what yall did to protect your actual images (if anything).

Do any of you use Digimark? Or Picscout?

Thanks again.

[bdkphoto]

The only real way to protect your work is to resister it with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. This will give you all the legal advantages if you find someone has used your work without permission.  The how-to and why of copyright registration is discussed at length at editorialphoto.com asmp.org, and the library of congress website.

[JohnKoerner]

The only real way to protect your work is to resister it with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. This will give you all the legal advantages if you find someone has used your work without permission.  The how-to and why of copyright registration is discussed at length at editorialphoto.com asmp.org, and the library of congress website.

That was actually my next question, and I appreciate the links.

I was wondering if you have to register each photo with the Library of Congress and pay the fee individually, or if you could send a DVD full of photos for one registration fee? The latter would make more sense.

I guess I will have to read it for myself and find out. I am also going to read about Picscout that Luong was kind enough to post.

In the end, I suppose the best way would be to copyright-protect any images with a program like Picscout (so you can trace them), and then at the same time to actually register all usable images with the Library of Congress, so you have a legitimate claim and recourse if an illegitimate use or your work is discovered.

Thanks again.

[luong]

All images published within a calendar year or all unpublished images can be registered as a group with the US Copyright office.

[atassy]

i'm not sure if this helps you but here's what i do:

for the reasons stated above i don't 'protect' my images on the web in any particular way. they are, however, not more than 600px wide and jpg compressed and therefore of very limited use commercially.
in the past i've had a flash-based site to make it a bit harder to grab single images but i don't bother with that any more. as has been pointed out before- those who really want to steal an image off the screen can do it anyway...

i do add my copyright info etc. in the meta data and mark it as 'copyrighted'. of course this doesn't prevent the 'scumbags' from grabbing and editing it, maybe even stripping it off the copyright info. but at least it reminds them that what they're doing is not cool.
and if they have no clue and use it as it is, maybe someone will discover the little © or read the meta, and ask them some questions.

it's not a 'safe' method but doesn't cause much hassle. might be that it's just something to make me feel less bad about people being able to download those (small, compressed) images and use them for free

[JohnKoerner]

All images published within a calendar year or all unpublished images can be registered as a group with the US Copyright office.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=170757\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Luong, that makes a whole lot more sense. Thanks for the information ... and BTW you have some absolutely wonderful photos on your website

Jack

PS: Atassy, what you and Luong state is probably the most sensible way to handle this issue: don't sweat the small stuff, but just make sure your truly valuable images are protected.

[alainbriot]

If you post your images to the web people will download them. That's the way things are. If they don't download them they will take screen shots of the flash which on a color-balanced monitor is nearly as good as downloading. It's just a fact of life, one that you have to come to grips with if you post to the web.

Your best protection is to post only small versions of your images to the web (I limit mines to 500 pixels maximum dimension) and type your web address on all your photographs.  Registering your work with the © department is also a good idea, but if someone steals your work and publishes it you may never find out and therefore won't be able to enforce the ©.  It's a big world out there!

If you create or sell fine art consider print quality as a protection as well, probably one of the best there is.  If you can produce print quality that is above average, or, better, that is world class, then there will be no mistaking what is your original work and what is a fake.  Enlarging a 500 pixels jpeg to a 16x20 or larger print, regardless of who prints it but most likely printed by someone with minor skills and experience, will never equal a finely printed original at full resolution.

In my mind, not much to worry about.

[djgarcia]

Printing a 16x20 from one of Alain's 500 pixel images would classify any such image as abstract - the pixels would probably be the size of a penny . If they can sell that, power to them!

[alainbriot]

DJ,

I agree :-)  In fact, I'm ready to give an award to anyone who actually does that and manages to sell it!